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SCHILLER # STUDIES IN HUMANISM

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STUDIES IN HUMANISM

KX^''

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

RIDDLES OF THE SPHINX

A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF HUMANISM

NEW AND REVISED EDITION

LONDON : MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 1910.

"AXIOMS AS POSTULATES"

PERSONAL IDEALISM

Edited by HENRY STURT
LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 1902.

HUMANISM

PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS

SECOND EDITION, ENLARGED

LONDON : MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 1912.

FORMAL LOGIC

A SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL PROBLEM
MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 1912.

PLATO OR PROTAGORAS?

BEING A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE ' PROTA-
GORAS' SPEECH IN THE THE^TETUS, WITH
SOME REMARKS UPON ERROR.

OXFORD: B. H. BLACKWELL.

LONDON : SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & CO. 1908. is. net.

STUDIES

HUMANISM

F. C S. SCHILLER, M.A., D.Sc.

FELLOW AND SENIOR TUTOR OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD

SECOND EDITION

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1912

3 0 9 34

First Edition 1907
Second Edition 1912

A V

MY PUPILS
PAST PRESENT AND TO COME

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

That a new edition of these Studies (as also oi Humanism)
is called for is one out of many indications ^ that the
Pragmatic Movement is gathering momentum and that
Humanism has come to stay. Even the most obstinate
conservatives are beginning to abandon their attitude of
speechless indignation, and to admit that it constitutes an
intelligible novelty, though they are not yet reconciled to
it. But as it takes more than a day or a generation
to undo the cumulative blunders of 2000 years of
Intellectualism, it will probably remain a novelty for
another century or two, until its applications have been
fully worked out. Its rate of progress will depend
on how soon the chief philosophic disciplines can be
re-written in a Humanist spirit. As a foretaste of this
necessary process the logical tradition has been systematic-
ally criticized in my Formal Logic (191 2), and shown to
be fundamentally inconsistent nonsense, as resting on an
abstraction from meaning and oscillating between verbalism
and * psychology,' both of which it vainly tries to disavow.
This puts Humanism, Axioms as Postulates, and these
Studies into the position of prolegomena to a future
Logic of Real Knowing. Even under the most favourable
circumstances, however, years must elapse before this can

^ To the writer it is, of course, peculiarly gratifying that these Studies have
been translated into French (Paris, Alcan, 1909), and a selection from them and
from Humanism into German (Leipzig, Klinkhardt, 191 1).

' a2y

X STUDIES IN HUMANISM

appear ; so it seemed better to reprint these Studies with
a minimum of alteration.

I must despair of cataloguing in this Preface the whole
output of the Pragmatic Controversy. Much has been
written since 1 907 on both sides, but, mercifully, little
that requires me to modify the views I had expressed.
We have suffered, of course, an irreparable loss in the
departure hence of the great initiator of the movement,
William James, with his message but half told. The
splendid series of his popular works. Pragmatism (1907),
A Pluralistic Universe (1909), The Meaning of Truth
(1909), Some Problems of Philosophy (191 1), will live, but
will always be somewhat too simple to be intelligible to
the professorial mind, which finds them hard to 'categorize.'
Lovers of thinking at first-hand, however, will enjoy them,
and should not omit to read also H. V. Knox's article in
the Quarterly Review (April 1909), Alfred Sidgwick's
Application of Logic (19 10), Dewey's Influence of Darwin
on Philosophy (191 o), and D. L. Murray's little primer of
Pragmatisjn ( 1 9 1 2 ).

Oxford, April 1912.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

Of the essays which compose this volume about half
have appeared in various periodicals — Mind, the Hibhert
Journal, the Quarterly Review, the Fortnightly Review,
and the Journal oj Philosophy — during the past three
years. Additions have, however, grown so extensive that
of the matter of the book not more than one-third, and
that the less constructive part, can be said to have been
in print before. That the form should still be dis-
continuous is due to the fact that the conditions under
which I have had to work greatly hamper and delay the
composition of a continuous treatise, and that it seemed
imperative to deal more expeditiously with the chief
strategic points of the philosophic situation. I hope,
however, that the discontinuity of the form will not be
found incompatible with an essential continuity of aim,
argument, and interest. In all these respects the present
Studies may most naturally be regarded as continuous
with Humanism and Axioms as Postulates, without, how-
ever, ceasing to be independently intelligible. They have
had to reflect the developments of philosophy and the
progress of discussion, and this has rendered them, I
fear, slightly more technical on the whole than Humanisnu.
Nor can their main topic, the meaning of Truth, be made
an altogether popular subject. On the other hand, they
touch more fully than Humanism on subjects which
are less exclusively technical, such as the nature of our
freedom and the religious aspects of philosophy.

That in the contents construction should be some-
what largely mixed with controversy is in some respects

xii STUDIES IN HUMANISM

regrettable. But whether one can avoid controversy
depends largely on whether one's doctrines are allowed
an opportunity of peaceful development. Also on
what one has undertaken to do. And in this case
the most harmless experiments in fog-dispelling have
been treated as profanations of the most sacred mysteries.
It is, however, quite true that the undertaking of the new
philosophy may be regarded as in some ways the most
stupendous in the history of thought. Heine, in a
well - known passage, once declared the feats of the
German Transcendentalists to have been more terrific than
those of the French Revolutionaries, in that they de-
capitated a Deity and not a mere mortal king. But
what was the Transcendental boldness of Kant, as described
by Heine, when armed only with the * Pure Reason,'
and attended only by his ' faithful Lampe ' and an
umbrella, he ' stormed Heaven and put the whole garrison
to the sword,' to the Transatlantic audacity of a Jacobin
philosophy which is seriously suspected of penetrating
into the ' supercelestial ' heavens of the Pure Reason,
and of there upsetting the centre of gravity of the In-
telligible Universe, of dethroning the ' Higher Synthesis
of the Devil and the Deity,' the Absolute, and of institut-
ing a general '• Gotzenddninierung' of the Eternal Ideas?
Even its avowed aim of humanizing Truth, and bring-
ing it back to earth from such altitudes, seems com-
parable with the Promethean sacrilege of the theft of
fire. What wonder, then, that such transcelestial con-
flagrations should kindle burning questions on the earth,
and be reflected in the heating of terrestrial tempers ?

But after all, the chief warrant for a polemical handling
of these matters is its strict relevance. The new truths
are most easily understood by contrast with the old
perplexities, and the necessity of advancing in their
direction is rendered most evident by the impossibility of
advancing in any other.^

That the development of the new views, then, should
have been so largely controversial, was probably in-

1 Cp. pp. 73-4.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION xiii

evitable. It has been all the more rapid for that. For
the intensity of intellectualistic prejudice and the intoler-
ance of Absolutism have compelled us to attack in sheer
self-defence, to press on our counter-statements in order to
engage the enemy along his whole front, and to hurry
every new argument into the line of battle as soon as it
became available.^

The result has been an unprecedented development
of converging novelties. Within the past three or four
years {i.e. since the preface to Humanisin was written)
there have appeared in the first place the important
Studies in Logical Theory by Prof Dewey and his
coadjutors. These, it is becoming more and more
evident, have dealt a death-blow, not only to the ' corre-
spondence-with-reality ' view of Truth, but also to all the
realisms and idealisms which involve it. And so far no
absolutism has succeeded in dispensing with it. Prof.
Dewey and his pupils have also contributed a number of
weighty and valuable papers and discussions to the philo-
sophic periodicals {Mind, the Journal of Philosophy, and
the Philosophical Review). Mr. C. S. Peirce's articles in the
Monist (1905) have shown that he has not disavowed the
great Pragmatic principle which he launched into the
world so unobtrusively nearly thirty years ago, and
seemed to leave so long without a father's care, William
James's final metaphysic, on the other hand, is still in
the making. But he has expounded and defended the
new views in a series of brilliant articles in the Journal of
Philosophy and in Mind: In England the literature of
the question has been critical rather than constructive.
In the forefront may be mentioned Mr. Henry Sturt's
Idola Theatri, a singularly lucid and readable study of
the genesis, development, and ailments of English Ab-
solutism. But the masterly (and unanswered) criticisms by
Capt. H. V. Knox and Mr. Alfred Sidgwick of the most

^ Readers, however, who wish to avoid this controversial side as much as
possible, may be counselled to read Essays i. , v. , ii. , iii. , vii. , xvi. -xx. in the
order indicated.

* Journal of Philosophy, I. Nos. 18, 20, 21, 25; II. Nos. 2, 5, 7, 9, 11 ;
III. No. 13. Mind, N.S. Nos. 52 and 54. (Now reprinted in A Pluralistic
Universe, The Meaning of Truth, and Essays in Radical Empiricism. )

xiv STUDIES IN HUMANISM

essential foundations of absolutist metaphysics should not
be forgotten.^ And lastly, Prof. Santayana's exquisite
Life of Reason should be cited as a triumph, not only of
literary form, but also of the Pragmatic Method in a
mind which has espoused a metaphysic very different
from that which in general Pragmatism favours. For
Prof. Santayana, though a pragmatist in epistemology,
is a materialist in metaphysics.^

The new movement is also in evidence beyond the
borders of the English-speaking world, either in its
properly pragmatic forms or in their equivalents and
analogues. It is most marked perhaps in France, where
it has the weighty support in philosophy of Prof Bergson
of the College de France, who has followed up the anti-
intellectualism of his Donnees immediates de la Conscience
by his Matiere et Memoire, and in science of Prof. Henri
Poincar^ of the Institute, whose La Science et PHypothese
and La Valenr de la Science expound the pragmatic
nature of the scientific procedures and assumptions with
unsurpassable lucidity and grace. He seems, indeed, as
yet unwilling to go as far as some of the ultra-pragmatic
followers of Prof Bergson, e.g. MM. Leroy and Wilbois,
and imposes some slight limitations on the pragmatic
treatment of knowledge, on the ground that knowledge
may be conceived as an end to which action is a means.
But this perhaps only indicates that this pre-eminent man
of science has not yet taken note of the work which has
been done by philosophers in the English-writing world
on the nature of the conception of Truth and the relation
of the scientific endeavour to our total activity. At any
rate he goes quite far enough to make it clear that
whoever henceforth wishes to uphold the traditional views
of the nature of science, and particularly of mathematics,
will have in the first place to confute Prof Poincare.

In Italy Florence boasts of a youthful, but extremely
active and brilliant, band of avowed Pragmatists, whose

^ Mind, N.S. Nos. 54 and 53,

2 I have discussed the relations of his work to the Pragmatic movement in
reviewing it for the Hibbert Jotirrial (January and July 1906).

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION xv

militant organ, the Leonardo, edited by Signer Giovanni
Papini, is distinguished by a freedom and vigour of
language which must frequently horrify the susceptibilities
of academic coteries. In Denmark Prof Hoffding is
more than sympathetic, and the Royal Academy of
Science has recently made the relations of Pragmatism
and Criticism the subject for the international prize essay
for which Schopenhauer once wrote his Grundlage der
Moral.

In Germany alone the movement seems slow to take
root eo nomine. Nevertheless, there are a goodly number
of analogous tendencies. Professors Ostwald and Mach
and their schools are the champions of a pragmatic view
of science. Various forms of * Psychologism,' proceeding
from the same considerations as those which have inspired
the Anglo-American pragmatisms, disturb the old con-
ceptions of Logic. Among them Prof Jerusalem's Der
kritische Idedlismus und die reine Logik is particularly
noteworthy. The ' school of Fries,' and conspicuously
Dr. Julius Schultz, the author of the brilliant Psychologie
der Axiojne, excellently emphasize the postulation of
axioms, though as their polemic against empiricism still
presupposes the Humian conception of a passive ex-
perience, they prefer to call them a priori} The human-
istic aspects of the movement find a close parallel in the
writings of Prof Eucken. But on the whole Germany
lags behind, largely because these various tendencies have
not yet been connected or brought to a common focus.
I have, however, reason to believe that this deficiency
may soon be remedied.

What, meanwhile, is the situation in the camp of
Intellectualism, which is still thronged with most of the
philosophic notables ? Although the technical journals
have been full of controversial articles, and the interest
excited has actually sent up the circulation of Mind,
singularly little has been produced that rises above the
merest misconception or misrepresentation ; and nothing
to invalidate the new ideas. Mr. F. H. Bradley has

^ Cp. Mind, XV. p. 115.

xvi STUDIES IN HUMANISM

exercised his great talents of philosophic caricature/ but
a positive alternative to Pragmatism, in the shape of an
intelligible, coherent doctrine of the nature of Truth, is
still the great desideratum of Intellectualism.

The most noteworthy attempt, beyond doubt, to work
out an intellectualistic ideal of Truth, which has proceeded
from the Anglo-Hegelian school, is Mr. H. H. Joachim's
recent Nature of Truth. But it may be doubted whether
its merits will commend it to the school. For it ends in
flat failure, and avowed scepticism, which is scientifically
redeemed only by the fact that its outspokenness greatly
facilitates the critic's task in laying his finger on the
fundamental flaw of all Intellectualism. With the ex-
ception of Plato's Theaetetus^ no book has, consequently,
been of greater service to me in showing how fatal the
depersonalizing of thought and the dehumanizing of Truth
are to the possibility and intelligibility of knowledge,
and how arbitrary and indefensible these abstractions
really are.

It would seem, therefore, that the situation is rapidly
clearing itself. On the one hand we have a new Method
with inexhaustible possibilities of application to life and
science, which, though it is not primarily metaphysical,
contains also the promise of an infinity of valuable, and
more or less valid, metaphysics : on the other, opposed to
it on every point, an old metaphysic of tried and tested
sterility, which is condemned to eternal failure by the
fundamental perversity of its logical method. And now
at last is light beginning to penetrate into its obscurities.
It is becoming clear that Rationalism is not rational, and
that ' reason ' does not sanction its pretensions. Absolut-
ism is ending as those who saw its essentially inhuman
character foresaw that it must. In its ' Hegelian ' as in
its Bradleian form, it has yielded itself wholly up to
Scepticism, and Mr. Bradley was evidently not a day
too soon in comparing it to Jericho.^ For its defences
have crumbled into dust, without a regular siege,
merely under the strain of attempts to man them. Its

^ Cp. Essay iv. 2 q^ p ug.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION xvii

opponents really are not needed for their demolition ;
they need merely record and applaud the work of self-
destruction.

But that this process should provoke dissatisfaction
and disintegration in the ranks of the absolutists is no
wonder, nor that the signs of their confusion should be
multiplying. No one seems to know, e.g., what is to be
done about the central point, the conception of Truth ;
whether the ' correspondence-view ' is to be reaffirmed or
abandoned, and in the former case, how it can be defended,
or in the latter, how it can be discarded.^ Nay, the voice
of mutiny is beginning to be heard. The advice is
openly given to the ' idealist ' host to shut up their
Bradley and their Berkeley, and to open their Plato and
their Hegel." As regards Hegel this recommendation is
not likely to be fruitful, because nothing will be found in
him that bears on the situation : Plato, on the other
hand, is likely to provide most salutary, but almost
wholly penitential, reading. For I believe, these Studies
will be found to fulfil a pledge given in Humanismf and
to show that Intellectualism may be confuted out of the
mouth of its own founder and greatest exponent. For
Plato had in fact perceived the final consequence of
Intellectualism, viz. that to complete itself it must de-
humanize the Ideal and derealize the Real, with superior
clearness. His unwillingness either to avoid or to conceal
this consequence is what has engendered the hopeless
crux of the ' Platonic problem ' from his day to this, and
from this difficulty no intellectualism can ever extricate
itself It may rail at humanity and try to dissolve
human knowledge ; but the only real remedy lies in
renouncing the abstractions on which it rests. Our only
hope of understanding knowledge, our only chance of
keeping philosophy alive by nourishing it with the
realities of life, lies in going back from Plato to Prota-
goras, and ceasing to misunderstand the great teacher
who discovered the Measure of man's Universe.

^ Cp. Essays iv. § 7 ; vii. § 1 ; xx. § 2.
2 Mind, N.S. No. 59, xv. p. 327. 3 p_ jjvii.

xviii STUDIES IN HUMANISM

I cannot conclude this Preface without recording my
indebtedness to my friend Capt H. V. Knox, who has
read a large part of these Studies in proof and in manu-
script, and with whom I have had the pleasure of dis-
cussing some of the knottiest points in the theory of
knowledge. I have profited thereby to such an extent
that I should find it hard to say how far some of the
doctrines here enunciated were his or mine.

SiLS Maria, September 1906.

CONTENTS

ESSAY PAGE

I. The Definition of Pragmatism and Humanism i

II. From Plato to Protagoras . . .22

III. The Relations of Logic and Psychology . 71

IV. Truth and Mr. Bradley . . .114
V. The Ambiguity of Truth . . .141

VI. The N.A.TURE of Truth . . . .163

VII. The Making of Truth .... 179

VIII. Absolute Truth and Absolute Reality . 204

IX. Empiricism and the Absolute . . . 224

X. Is 'Absolute Idealism' Solipsistic? . 258

XI. Absolutism and the Dissociation of Per-
sonality . . . . . 266

XII. Absolutism and Religion . . . 274

XIII. The Papyri of Philonous, I. -I I. . . 298

XIV. I. Protagoras the Humanist . . . 302
XV. II. A Dialogue concerning Gods and Priests 326

XVI. Faith, Reason, and Religion . . . 349

XVII. The Progress of Psychical Research . 370

XVIII. Freedom . . . . . .391

XIX. The Making of Reality . . .421

XX. Dreams and Idealism .... 452

INDEX ....... 487

THE DEFINITION OF PRAGMATISM AND
HUMANISM

ARGUMENT

The need of definitions. I. Importance of the problem of Error. Truth
as the evaluation of claims. The question begged and burked by
Intellectualism. The value of the consequences as the Humanist test.
Why 'true' consequences are 'practical' and 'good.' Impossibility of
a ' purely intellectual ' satisfaction. First definition of Pragmatism :
truths are logical values. II. Necessity of ' verification ' of truth by use
or application ; the second definition, the truth of an assertion depends
on its application ; and the third, the meaning of a rule lies in its
application ; the fourth, all meaning depends on purpose. Its value as a
protest against the divorce of logic from psychology. Fifth definition, all
mental life is purposive, a protest against Naturalism, as is the sixth, a
systematic protest against ignoring the ptirposiveness of actual knowi?tg.
No alien reality. Finally this leads to a seventh definition as a conscious
application to logic of a teleological psychology, implying a voluntaristic
metaphysic. III. Humanism as the spirit of Pragmatism, and like
it a natural method, which will not mutilate experience. Its antagonism
to pedantry. It includes Pragmatism, but is not necessitated by the
latter, nor confined to epistemology. IV. Neither is as such a meta-
physic, both are methods, metaphysical syntheses being merely
personal. But both may be conceived metaphysically and have
metaphysical affinities. Need of applying the pragmatic test to
metaphysics.

Real definitions are a standing difficulty for all who
have to deal with them, whether as logicians or as
scientists, and it is no wonder that dialectical philosophers
fight very shy of them, prefer to manipulate their verbal
imitations, and count themselves happy if they can get
an analysis of the acquired meaning of a word to pass
muster instead of a troublesome investigation of the
behaviour of a thing. For a real definition, to be adequate,

2 STUDIES IN HUMANISM i

really involves a complete knowledge of the nature of the
thing defined. And of what subject of scientific interest
can we flatter ourselves to have complete knowledge ?

The difficulty, moreover, of defining adequately is in-
definitely increased when we have to deal with subjects
of which our knowledge, or their nature, is rapidly develop-
ing, so that our definitions grow obsolete almost as fast
as they are made. Nevertheless definitions of some sort
are psychologically needed : we must know what things
are, enough at least to know what we are discussing. It
is just in the most progressive subjects that definitions
are most needed to consolidate our acquisitions. In their
absence the confusion of thought and the irrelevance of
discussion may reach the most amazing proportions.
And so it is the duty of those who labour at such subjects
to avail themselves of every opportunity of explaining
what they mean, to begin with, and never to weary of
redefining their conceptions when the growth of know-
ledge has enlarged them, even though they may be aware
that however assiduously they perform this duty, they
will not escape misconception, nor, probably, misrepre-
sentation. The best definitions to use in such circum-
stances, however, will be genetic ones, explaining how the
matters defined have come into the ken of science, and
there assumed the shape they have.

All these generalities apply with peculiar force to the
fundamental conceptions of the new philosophy. The
new ideas have simultaneously broken through the hard
crust of academic convention in so many quarters, they
can be approached in such a multitude of ways, they
radiate into so many possibilities of application, that
their promoters run some risk of failing to combine their
labours, while their opponents may be pardoned for
losing their tempers as well as their heads amid the
profusion of unco-ordinated movements which the lack of
formal definition is calculated to encourage.

Even provisional definitions of Pragmatism and
Humanism, therefore, will possess some value, if they
succeed in pointing out their central conceptions.

PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM

The serious student, I dare not say of formal logic,
but of the cognitive procedures of the human intelligence,
whenever he approaches the theory of actual knowing,
at once finds himself confronted with the problem of
error.^ All ' logical propositions,' as he calls them, make
the same audacious claim upon him. They all claim to
be ' true ' without reservations or regard for the claims of
others. And yet, of course, unless he shuts his eyes to
all but the most ' formal ' view of ' truth,' he knows that
the vast majority of these propositions are nothing but
specious impostors. They are not really * true,' and
actual science has to disallow their claim. The logician,
therefore, must take account of this rejection of claims, of
this selection of the really ' true ' from among apparent
' truths.' In constituting his science, therefore, he has to
condemn as * false ' as well as to recognize as ' true,' i.e.
to evaluate claims to truth.

The question therefore is — How does he effect this ?
How does he discriminate between propositions which
claim to be true, but are not, and claims to truth which
are good, and may be shown to be valid ? How, that is,
are valid truths distinguished from mere claims which
may turn out to be false? These questions are in-
evitable, and no theory of knowledge which fails to
answer them has any claim on our respect. It avows
an incompleteness which is as disgraceful as it is in-
convenient.

Now from the standpoint of rationalistic intellectual-
ism there is no real answer to these questions, because

^ Contrast with this the putting of the question in an absolutist logic, e.g. Mr.
Joachim's instructive Nature of Truth, which I had not seen when this was written.
Mr. Joachim begins at the opposite end with ' the Ideal,' and avoids the con-
sideration of Error as long as he can. But when he does come to it, he is
completely worsted, and his system is wrecked. Thus the difference between the
Absolutist and the Humanist theory lies chiefly in the standpoint ; the facts are
the same on either view. The question, in fact, resolves itself into this,
whether or not ' Logic ' is concerned with human thought. This the humanist
affirms, while the absolutist is under the disadvantage of not daring to deny it
■wholly. Hence the incoherence and inevitable collapse of his theory. Cp.
Essay ii. §§ 16-17.

4 STUDIES IN HUMANISM i

a priori inspection cannot determine the value of a claim,
and experience is needed to decide whether it is good or
not.^ Hence the obscurity, ambiguity, and shiftiness, the
general impotence and unreality, of the traditional logic
is largely a consequence of its incapacity to deal with this
difficulty. For how can you devise any practicable
method of evaluating 'truths,' if you decline (i) to allow
practical applications and the consequences of the work-
ing out of claims to affect their validity, if you decline
(2) to recognize any intermediate stage in the making of
truth between the mere claim and a completed ideal of
absolute truth, and if, moreover, (3) you seek to burke
the whole question of the formation of ideals by assuming
that prior to all experience and experiment there exists one
immutable ideal towards which all claims must converge ?
Pragmatism, on the other hand, essays to trace out
the actual ' making of truth,' " the actual ways in which
discriminations between the true and the false are effected,
and derives from these its generalizations about the
method of determining the nature of truth. It is from
such empirical observations that it derives its doctrine

^ The complete failure of intellectualism to apprehend even the most obvious
aims of Pragmatism is amusingly illustrated by Mr. Bradley's fulminations
against us on the ground that we cannot possibly distinguish between a
random claim and an established truth. He pontifically declares {Mind, xiii.
p. 322) that "the Personal Idealist ... if he understood his own doctrine
mui'hold any end, however perverted, to be rational, if I insist on it person-
ally, and any idea, however mad, to be the truth, if only some one will have it
so." Again, on p. 329, he ludicrously represents us as holding that "I can
make and I can unmake fact and truth at my caprice, and every vagary of mine
becomes the nature of things. This insane doctrine is what consistency demands,"
but Mr. Bradley graciously concedes that ' ' I cannot attribute it even to the
protagonist of Personal Idealism." Of course if there is one subject which
pragmatist logicians may be said to have made their own from the days of
Protagoras downwards, it is that of the evaluation of individual claims and their
gradual transformation into ' objective ' truths (cp. Essay ii. § 5). Intellectualists,
on the other hand, have ever steadfastly refused to consider the discrepancies
arising from the existence of psychological variations in human valuations (cp. p.
132), or lazily preferred to attribute to 'the human,' or even to 'the absolute,'
mind whatever idiosyncrasies they discovered in themselves. Thus inquiry into
the actual making of truth has been tabooed, the most important questions have
been begged, and both the extent and the limitations of the ' common ' world of
intersubjective social agreement have been left an unaccountable mystery, some-
times further aggravated by the metaphysical postulation of a superhuman mind
conceived as ' common ' to all human minds, but really incompetent to enter into
relation with any of them, and a fortiori incapable of accounting for their
individual differences,

^ Cp. Essay vii.

I PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 5

that when an assertion claims truth, its consequences are
always used to test its claim. In other words, what
follows from its truth for any human interest, and more
particularly and in the first place, for the interest with
which it is directly concerned, is what established its real
truth and validity. This is the famous ' Principle of
Peirce,' which ought to be regarded as the greatest truism,
if it had not pleased Intellectualism to take it as the
greatest paradox. But that only showed, perhaps, how
completely intellectualist traditions could blind philo-
sophers to the simplest facts of cognition. For there
was no intrinsic reason why even the extremest in-
tellectualism should have denied that the difference
between the truth and the falsehood of an assertion must
show itself in some visible, observable way, or that two
theories which led to precisely the same practical con-
sequences could be different only in words.

Human interest, then, is vital to the existence of truth :
to say that a truth has consequences and that what has
none is meaningless, means that it has a bearing upon
some human interest. Its ' consequences ' must be con-
sequences to some one engaged on a real problem for
some purpose. If it is clearly grasped that the 'truth'
with which we are concerned is truth for man and that
the ' consequences ' are human too, it is, however, super-
fluous to add either (i) that the consequences must be
practical, or (2) that they must be good} in order to
distinguish this view sharply from that of rationalism.

For (i) all consequences are 'practical,' sooner or
later, in the sense of affecting our action. Even where

^ In Mind, xiv. N.S. No. 54, p. 236, I tried to draw a distinction between a
narrower and a wider ' pragmatism," of which I attributed only the former to
Mr. Peirce. In this I was following James's distinction between the positions
that 'truths should have practical consequences,' and that they 'consist in their
consequences,' and that these must be 'good.' Of these he seemed to attribute
only the former to Mr. Peirce, and denominated the latter Humanism. But
Humanism seems to me to go further still, and not to be restricted to the one
question of ' truth. ' If, as Mr. Peirce has privately assured me, he had from the
first perceived the full consequences of his dictum, the formulation of the whole
pragmatic principle must be ascribed to him. But he has also exhibited
extensive inability to follow the later developments, and now calls his own
sp)ecific form of Pragmatism, ' pragmaticism.' Sec Monisi, xv. 2.

6 STUDIES IN HUMANISM i

they do not immediately alter the course of events, they
alter our own nature, and cause its actions to be different,
and thus lead to different operations on the world.

Similarly (2) if an assertion is to be valuable, and
therefore ' true,' its consequences must be * good.' They
can only test the truth it claims by forwarding or baffling
the interest, by satisfying or thwarting the purpose, which
led to the making of the assertion. If they do the one,
the assertion is ' good,' and pro tanto * true ' ; if they do
the other, it is ' bad ' and ' false.' For whatever arouses
an interest or forwards an end is judged to be (so far)
* good,' whatever baffles or thwarts is judged to be * bad.'
If, therefore, the consequences of an assertion turn out to
be in this way ' good,' it is valuable for our purposes, and,
provisionally at least, establishes itself as ' true ' ; if they
are bad, we reject it as useless and account it ' false,' and
search for something that satisfies our purpose better, or
in extreme cases accept it as a provisional truth concern-
ing a reality we are determined to unmake. Thus the
predicates ' true ' and ' false ' are nothing in the end but
indications of logical value, and as values akin to and
comparable with the values predicated in ethical and
aesthetical judgments, which present similar problems of
the validation of claims.^

The reason, therefore, why truth is said to depend on
its consequences is simply this, that if we do not imagine
truths to exist immutably and a priori in a supercelestial
world, and to descend magically into a passively recipient
soul, as rationalists since Plato have continually tried
to hold,^ they must come into being by winning our
acceptance. And what rational mode of verification can
any one suggest other than this testing by their con-
sequences ?

Of course the special nature of the testing depends on
the subject-matter, and the nature of the ' experiments '
which are in this way made in mathematics, in ethics,
in physics, in religion, may seem very diverse superficially.

But there is no reason to set up a peculiar process of

1 Essay v. § 3. ^ q^^ Essay ii. §§ 15, 16.

I PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 7

verification for the satisfying of a ' purely intellectual '
interest, different in kind from the rest, superior in dignity,
and autocratic in authority. For (i) there is no pure
intellect. If * pure intellect ' does not imply a gross
blunder in psychology, and this is probably what it too
often meant until the conception was challenged, it means
an abstraction, an intellect conceived as void of function,
as not applied to any actual problem, as satisfying
no purpose. Such an intellect of course would be
absurd. Or is it possibly conceived as having the end
of amusing its possessor ? As achieving this end it may
claim somewhat more regard, but apart from its value as
exercise, the mere play of the intellect, which is meant
for serious work, does not seem intrinsically venerable ;
it is certainly just as liable to abuse as any other game.
And (2) if we exclude morbid or frivolous excesses, the
actual functioning of the intellect, even in what are called
its most ' purely intellectual ' forms, is only intelligible by
reference to human ends and values.

All testing of ' truth,' therefore, is fundamentally alike.
It is always an appeal to something beyond the original
claim. It always implies an experiment. It always
involves a risk of failure as well as a prospect of success.
And it always ends in a valuation. As Prof. Mach has
said : ^ " knowledge and error flow from the self-same
psychic sources ; the issue alone can discriminate between
them." We arrive, therefore, at our first definition of
Pragmatism as the doctrine that (i) truths are logical
values, and as the method which systematically tests
claims to truth in accordance with this principle.

It is easily apparent that it directly follows from this
definition of truth that all ' truths ' must be verified to

' Erkejtntnis und Irrtum, p. 114. The German word '■ Erfolg,' translated 'issue,'
covers both ' consequence ' and ' success ' : it is, in fact, one of many words by
which language spontaneously testifies to the pragmatic nature of thought.
Cp. 'fact' — 'made,' 'true' — 'trow' — 'trust,' 'false' — 'fail,' 'verify,' 'come
true,' ' object ' = ' aim,' ' judgment ' = ' decision ' ; and in German ' wirklich' —
'wirken' ' wahr' — ' bewdhren,' ' W'ahmehmung,' ' Tatsache,' etc.

8 STUDIES IN HUMANISM i

be properly true. A ' truth ' which will not (or cannot)
submit to verification is not yet a truth at all. Its truth
is at best potential, its meaning is null or unintelligible,
or at most conjectural and dependent on an unfulfilled
condition. On its entry into the world of existence a
truth-claim has merely commended itself (perhaps pro-
visionally) to its maker. To become really true it has
to be tested, and it is tested by being applied. Only
when this is done, only that is when it is used^ can it be
determined what it really means, and what conditions it
must fulfil to be really true. Hence all real truths must
have shown themselves to be useful ; they must have been
applied to some problem of actual knowing, by usefulness
in which they were tested and verified.

Hence we arrive at a second formulation of the prag-
matic principle, on which Mr. Alfred Sidgwick has justly
laid such stress,^ viz. that (2) tJie ' truth ' of an assertion
depends on its applicatio7i. Or, in other words, ' abstract '
truths are not fully truths at all. They are truths out of
use, unemployed, craving for incarnation in the concrete.
It is only in their actual operations upon the world of
immediate experience that they cast off their callous
ambiguity, that they mean, and live, and show their
power. Now in ordinary life men of ordinary intelli-
gence are quite aware of this. They recognize that truth
depends very essentially upon context, on who says what,
to whom, why, and under what circumstances ; they know
also that the point of a principle lies in the application
thereof, and that it is very hazardous to guide oneself
by abstract maxims with a doctrinaire disregard of the
peculiarities of the case. The man of science similarly,
for all the world-embracing sweep of his generalizations,
for all his laudations of inexorable ' law,' is perfectly
aware that his theoretic anticipations always stand in
need of confirmation in fact, and that if this fails his
* laws ' are falsified. They are not true, unless they
' come true.'

The intellectualist philosopher alone has blinded him-

1 The Application of Logic, p. 272, and ch. ix. § 43.

I PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 9

self to these simple facts. He has dreamt a wondrous
dream of a truth that shall be absolutely true, self-testing,
and self-dependent, icily exercising an unrestricted sway
over a submissive world, whose adoration it rfequites with
no services, and scouting as blasphemy all allusion to use
or application. But he cannot point to any truth which
realizes his ideal.^ Even the abstract truths of arithmetic,
upon which alone he seems to rest his case, now that the
invention of metageometries has shown the ' truth of
geometry ' to involve also the question of its application,
derive their truth from their application to experience.
The abstract statement, e.g. that " two and two make
four," is always incomplete. We need to know to what
' twos ' and ' fours ' the dictum is applied. It would not
be true of lions and lambs, nor of drops of water, nor of
pleasures and pains. The range of application of the
abstract truth, therefore, is quite limited. And conceivably
it might be so restricted that the truth would become
inapplicable to the outer world altogether. Nay, though
states of consciousness could always be counted, so long
as succession was experienced, it is impossible to see how
it could be true to an eternal consciousness. The gods,
as Aristotle would have said, seeing that they cannot
count, can have no arithmetic.

In short, truths must be used to become true, and (in
the end) to stay true. They are also meant to be used.
They are rules for action. And a rule that is not applied,
and remains abstract, rules nothing, and means nothing.
Hence we may, once more following Mr. Alfred Sidgwick,
regard it as the essence of the pragmatic method that (3)
the meaning of a rule lies in its application. It rules, that
is, and is true, within a definite sphere of application which
has been marked out by experiment.

Perhaps, however, it is possible to state the pragmatic
character of truth still more incisively by laying it down
that ultimately (4) all meaning depends on purpose. This
formulation grows naturally out of the last two. The
making of an assertion, the application of an alleged

1 Cp. Essay ii. §§ 16-18.

lo STUDIES IN HUMANISM i

truth to the experience which tests it, can only occur in
the context of and in connexion with some purpose, which
defines the nature of the whole ideal experiment

The dependence of meaning on purpose is beginning
to be somewhat extensively recognized, though hardly as
yet what havoc this principle must work among the ab-
stractions of intellectualist logic. For it is one of the most
distinctive ways in which the pragmatic view of truth
can be enunciated, and guards against two of the chief
failings of Intellectualism. It contains an implicit protest
against the abstraction of logic from psychology : for
purpose is as clearly a psychological conception as meaning
is professedly a logical one.^ And it negatives the notion
that truth can depend on how things would appear to an
all-embracing, or ' absolute,' mind. For such a mind could
have no purpose. It could not, that is, select part of its
content as an object of special interest to be operated
on or aimed at.^ In human minds, on the other hand,
meaning is always selective and purposive.

It is, in fact, a biological function, intimately related
to the welfare of the organism. Biologically speaking,
the whole mind, of which the intellect forms part, may be
conceived as a typically human instrument for effecting
adaptations, which has survived and developed by showing
itself possessed of an efficacy superior to the devices
adopted by other animals. Hence the most essential
feature of Pragmatism may well seem its insistence on
the fact that (5) all mental life is purposive. This insist-
ence in reality embodies the pragmatic protest against
naturalism, and as such ought to receive the cordial
support of rationalistic idealisms. But it has just been
shown that absolutist idealisms have their own difficulties
with the conception of purpose, and besides, it is an open
secret that they have for the most part long ago reduced
the * spiritual nature of reality ' to a mere form, and retired
from the struggle against naturalism.^ A ' spiritual nature
of reality ' which accepts all the naturalistic negations of

^ See Essay iii. § 9. ^ Cp. Essay ix. § 5.

3 Cp. Essay xii. § 5.

I PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM ii

human activity and freedom, and leaves no room for
any of the characteristic procedures and aspirations of the
human spirit, is a more dangerous foe to man's spiritual
ambitions than the most downright materialism.

Pragmatism, therefore, must enter its protest against
both the extremes that have so nearly met. It must
constitute itself into (6) a systematic protest against all
ignoring of the purposiveness of actual knowing, alike
whether it is abstracted from for the sake of the im-
aginary ' pure ' or ' absolute ' reason of the rationalists,
or eliminated for the sake of an equally imaginary * pure
mechanism ' of the materialists. It must insist on the
permeation of all actual knowing by interests, purposes,
desires, emotions, ends, goods, postulations, choices, etc.,
and deny that even those doctrines which vociferate their
abhorrence of such things are really able to dispense with
them. For the human reason is ever gloriously human,
even when most it tries to disavow its nature, and to mis-
conceive itself. It mercifully interposes an impenetrable veil
between us and any truth or reality which is wholly alien
to our nature. The efforts, therefore, of those who ignore
the nature of the instruments they use must ever fail, and
fail the more flagrantly the more strenuously they persist
in thinking to the end.

If, however, we have the courage and perseverance to
persist in thinking to the end, i.e. to form a metaphysic,
it is likely that we should arrive at some sort of Volun-
tarism. For Voluntarism is the metaphysic which most
easily accords and harmonizes with the experience of
activity with which all our thinking and all our living
seem to overflow. Metaphysics, however, are in a
manner luxuries. Men can live quite well without a
conscious metaphysic, and the systems even of the most
metaphysical are hardly ever quite consistent, or fully
thought out Pragmatism, moreover, is not a metaphysic,
though it may, somewhat definitely, point to one. It is
really something far more precious, viz. an epistemo-
logical method which really describes the facts of actual
knowing.

12 STUDIES IN HUMANISM i

But though it is only a method in the field of logic, it
may well confess to its affinities for congenial views in
other sciences. It prides itself on its close connexion
with psychology. But it clearly takes for granted that
the psychology with which it is allied has recognized the
reality of purposes. And so it can be conceived as a
special application to the sphere of logic of standpoints
and methods which extend far beyond its borders. So
conceived we may describe it as (7) a conscious application
to epistemology {or logic) of a teleological psychology, which
implies, ultimately, a voluntaristic metaphysic.

These seven formulations of the essence of Pragmatism
look, doubtless, very different in words ; but they are
nevertheless very genuinely equivalent. For they are
closely connected, and the ' essence,' like the ' definition,*
of a thing is relative to the point of view from which it
is regarded.^ And the problems raised by Pragmatism are
so central that it has points of contact with almost every
line of philosophical inquiry, and so is capable of being
defined by its relation to this. What is really important,
however, is not this or that formulation, but the spirit in
which it approaches, and the method by which it examines,
its problems. The method we have observed ; it is em-
pirical, teleological, and concrete. Its spirit is a bigger
thing, which may fitly be denominated Humanism.

Ill

Humanism is really in itself the simplest of philosophic
standpoints ; it is merely the perception that the philo-
sophic problem concerns human beings striving to com-
prehend a world of human experience by the resources of
human minds. Not even Pragmatism could be simpler
or nearer to an obvious truism of cognitive method. For
if man may not presume his own nature in his reasonings
about his experience, wherewith, pray, shall he reason ?
What prospect has he of comprehending a radically alien

^ Cp. Formal Logic, pp. 53-4.

I PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 13

universe ? And yet not even Pragmatism has been more
bitterly assailed than the great principle that man is the
measure of his experience, and so an ineradicable factor
in any world he experiences. The Protagorean principle
may sometimes seem paradoxical to the uninstructed, be-
cause they think it leaves out of account the 'independence'
of the * external ' world. But this is mere misunderstand-
ing. Humanism has no quarrel with the assumptions of
common-sense realism ; it does not deny what is popularly
described as the ' external ' world. It has far too much
respect for the pragmatic value of conceptions which de
facto work far better than those of the metaphysics which
despise and try to supersede them. It insists only that
the ' external world ' of realism is still dependent on
human experience, and perhaps ventures to add also
that the data of human experience are not completely
used up in the construction of a real external world.^
Moreover, its assailants are not realists, though, for the
purpose of such attacks, they may masquerade as
such.^

The truth is rather that Humanism gives offence, not
because it leaves out, but because it leaves in. It leaves
in a great deal intellectualism would like to leave out, a
great deal it has no use for, which it would like to extir-
pate, or at least to keep out of its sight. But Humanism will
not assent to the mutilations and expurgations of human
nature which have become customary barbarisms in the
initiation ceremonies of too many philosophic schools. It
demands that man's integral nature shall be used as the
whole premiss which philosophy must argue from whole-
heartedly, that man's complete satisfaction shall be the
conclusion philosophy must aim at, that philosophy shall
not cut itself loose from the real problems of life by making
initial abstractions which are false, and would not be admir-
able, even if they were true. Hence it insists on leaving in
the whole rich luxuriance of individual minds, instead of
compressing them all into a single type of 'mind,' feigned to
be one and immutable ; it leaves in also the psychological

1 Cp. Essay xx. § 14, ^ Cp. Essay xx. § 4.

14 STUDIES IN HUMANISM i

wealth of every human mind and the complexities of its
interests, emotions, volitions, aspirations. By so doing it
sacrifices no doubt much illusory simplicity in abstract
formulas, but it appreciates and explains vast masses of
what before had had to be slurred over as unintelligible
fact.^

The dislike of Humanism, therefore, is psychological
in origin. It arises from the nature of certain human
minds who have become too enamoured of the artificial
simplifications, or too accustomed to the self-inflicted
mutilations, and the self-imposed torments, whereby they
hope to merit absorption in absolute truth. These ascetics
of the intellectual world must steadfastly oppose the free
indulgence in all human powers, the liberty of moving, of
improving, of making, of manipulating, which Humanism
vindicates for man, and substitutes for the old ideal of an
inactive contemplation of a static truth. It is no wonder
that the Simeons Stylitae of the old order, hoisted aloft
each on the pillar of his metaphysical ' system,' resent the
disturbance of their restful solitude, ' alone with the Alone,'
by the hoots of intrusive motor-cars ; that the Saint
Antonys of the deserts of Pure Thought are infuriated
by their conversion into serviceable golf-links ; and that
the Juggernaut Car of the Absolute gets fewer and fewer
votaries to prostrate themselves beneath its wheels every
time it is rolled out of the recesses of its sanctuary — for
when man has grown conscious of his powers he will prefer
even to chance an encounter with a useful machine to
being run over by a useless ' deity.'

The active life of man is continuously being trans-
formed by the progress of modern science, by the know-
ledge which is power. But not so the ' knowledge ' which
is ' contemplation,' which postpones the test of action,
and struggles to evade it. Unfortunately, it is hard to
modernize the academic life, and it is this life which is
the fountain-head of intellectualism. Academic life natur-
ally tends to produce a certain intellectualistic bias, and to

1 Contrast Mr. Joachim's Nature of Truth throughout, especially pp. 167-8,
and compare Essay ii. § 16.

I PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 15

select the natures which incline to it. Intellectualism,
therefore, in some form will always be a congenial philo-
sophy which is true to the academic life.

Genuine whole-hearted Humanism, on the other hand,
is a singularly difficult attitude to sustain in an academic
atmosphere ; for the tendencies of the whole mode of life
are unceasingly against it. If Protagoras had been a univer-
sity professor, he would hardly have discovered Humanism ;
he would more likely have constructed a Nephelococcygia
of a system that laid claim to absolute, universal, and
eternal truth, or spent his life in overthrowing the dis-
crepant, but no less presumptuous, systems of his col-
leagues. Fortunately he lived before universities had
been invented to regulate, and quench, the thirst for
knowledge ; he had to earn his living by the voluntary
gratitude for instructions which could justify themselves
only in his pupils' lives ; and so he had to be human
and practical, and to take the chill of pedantry off his
discourses.

Just because Humanism, then, is true to the larger life
of man it must be in some measure false to the artificially
secluded studies of a ' seat of learning ' ; and its accept-
ance by an academic personage must always mean a
triumph over the obvious temptation to idealize and adore
the narrownesses of his actual life. However much it exalts
the function of man in general, it may always be taken
to hint a certain disparagement of the academic man. It
needs a certain magnanimity, in short, in a professor to
avow himself a Humanist.

Thorough Humanists, therefore, will always be some-
what rare in academic circles. There will always be many
who will not be able to avoid convincing themselves of
the truth of a method which works like the pragmatic one
(and indeed in another twenty years pragmatic convictions
will be practically universal), without being able to over-
come the intellectualistic influences of their nature and
their mode of life. Such persons will be psychologically
incapacitated to advance in the path which leads from
Pragmatism to Humanism.

i6 STUDIES IN HUMANISM i

Yet this advance is in a manner logical as well as
psychological. For those whose nature predisposes them
towards it will find it reasonable and satisfying, and when
they have reached the Humanist position and reflect upon
the expansion of Pragmatism which it involves, there will
seem to be a ' logical ' connexion. Pragmatism will seem
a special application of Humanism to the theory of know-
ledge. But Humanism will seem more universal. It
will seem to be possessed of a method which is applic-
able universally, to ethics, to aesthetics, to metaphysics, to
theology, to every concern of man, as well as to the theory
of knowledge.

Yet there will be no * logical ' compulsion. Here, as
always when we come to the important choices of life, we
must be free to stop at the lower level, if we are to be
free to advance to the higher. We can stop at the
epistemological level of Pragmatism (just as we can stop
short of philosophy on the scientific plane, and of science
on the plane of ordinary life), accepting Pragmatism indeed
as the method and analysis of our cognitive procedure,
but without seeking to generalize it, or to turn it into a
metaphysic. Indeed if our interest is not keen in life as
a whole, we are very likely to do something of the kind.

What, then, shall be said of metaphysics ? As Prag-
matism and Humanism have been defined, neither of them
necessitates a metaphysic.^ Both are methods ; the one

1 Hence the criticism to which both have frequently been subjected on the
ground that they were not metaphysically complete philosophies {e.g. by Dr. S. H.
Mellone in Alind, xiv. pp. 507-529) involves a certain misconstruction. I can
refer the curious to a (or rather my) humanist metaphysic in Riddles of the Sphinx
(new ed. 1910). But the essay on ' Axioms as Postulates' in Personal Idealism
was epistemological throughout ; so were the pragmatic parts of Humanism.
' Activity and Substance ' does indeed contain some metaphysical construction, but
it is not distinctively pragmatic. When, therefore. Dr. Mellone {I.e. p. 528)
ascribes to me the assumption of an absolute chaos as ihe prius of experience,
condemns it as unthinkable, and finally complains of feeling a ' collapse ' when
' ' this incredible metaphysical dogma is suddenly transformed into a methodo-
logical postulate," he has made his difficulty by construing my epistemology as
metaphysics. Antecedently this misinterpretation would never have seemed

I PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 17

restricted to the special problem of knowing, the other
more widely applicable. And herein lies their value ; for
methods are necessities of scientific progress, and there-
fore indispensable. Metaphysics, on the other hand, are
really luxuries, personal indulgences that may be conceded
to a lifelong devotion to science, but of no coercive
objective validity. For there is an immense discrepancy
between the ideal claims of metaphysics and the actual
facts. By definition metaphysics is {i.e. tries to be) the
science of the final synthesis of all the data of our experi-
ence. But de facto these data are (i) insufficient, and (2)
individual. Hence (i) the metaphysical synthesis is
lacking in cogency : it is imaginative and conjectural. It
is the ideal completion of an image of reality which is
rough-hewn and fragmentary ; it is the reconstruction of
a torso. Whoever therefore prefers to remain within the
bounds of actual knowledge, is entitled to refrain from
pledging himself to a metaphysic. He may recognize any
realities, he may employ any conceptions and methods, he
finds necessary or expedient, without affirming their
ultimate validity.

(2) And so those whose spirits crave for an ideal

possible to me, and so I thought it unnecessary to insert a warning against
it. But that several able critics have fallen into this error shows the extent
of the confusion of thought induced by the deliberate blurring of the
boundaries between logic and metaphysics which we owe to Hegelizing
philosophers. If, however, Dr. Mellone will do me the honour of re-reading
my doctrine as purely epistemological, he will see that both the difficulty
and the ' collapse ' were in his own preconceptions. In itself the conception
of knowledge as developing by the progressive determination of a relatively
indeterminate and plastic ' matter ' never pretended to be more than an analysis
of knowledge. It does indeed point to the conceptual limit of a ' first matter '
in which as yet no determinations have been acquired, but it does not affirm its
positive existence, and it is quite conceivable (i)that our analysis may be brought
up against some irreducible datum of fact, and (2) that it should never actually
get back to the metaphysical origin of things. Anyhow, the question of the proper
metaphysical interpretation of the conceptions used in pragmatic epistemology
was not raised. Epistemologically, however, the conception of a determinable
plastic ' matter ' seems useful enough as descriptive of our knowing, and as inno-
cent and at least as valid as the Aristotelian notion that knowledge always arises
out of pre-existent knowledge. Of course such notions get into difficulties when
we try to extract from them accounts of the absolute origin of knowledge. But
is it so sure that absolute origins can ever be traced ? They are certainly not to
be had for the asking. For they always seem to involve a demand for the
derivation of something out of nothing. And I am not aware that any theory
has up to date answered these questions. But I am hopeful that Humanist
metaphysics will not be so wildly irrelevant to actual life as in the past meta-
physical attempts have mostly been. ^

i8 STUDIES IN HUMANISM i

completion and confirmation of knowledge by a meta-
physical construction must abate their pretensions. They
must renounce the pretence of building what is universal,
and eternal, and objective, and compulsory, and ' valid for
intelligence as such.' In view of the actual facts, does it
not argue an abysmal conceit and stupendous ignorance
of the history of thought to cherish the delusion that of
all philosophies one's own alone was destined to win
general acceptance ipsissimis verbis, or even to be reflected,
undimmed and unmodified, in any second soul ? Every
metaphysic, in point of fact, works up into its structure
large masses of subjective material which is individual, and
drawn from its author's personal experience. It always
takes its final form from an idiosyncrasy.

And, furthermore, this is quite as it should be. If it
really is the duty of metaphysics to leave out nothing, to
undo abstractions, to aspire to the whole of experience,
it must have this personal tinge. For a man's personal
life must contribute largely to his data, and his idiosyn-
crasy must colour and pervade whatever he experiences.
It is surely the most sinister and fatal of abstractions to
abstract from the variety of individual minds, in order to
postulate a universal substance in which personal life is
obliterated, because one is too ignorant or indolent to cope
with its exuberance. Two men, therefore, with different
fortunes, histories, and temperaments, ought not to arrive at
the same metaphysic, nor can they do so honestly ; each
should react individually on the food for thought which
his personal life affords, and the resulting differences
ought not to be set aside as void of ultimate significance.
Nor is it true or relevant to reply that to admit this
means intellectual anarchy. What it means is something
quite as distasteful to the absolutist temper, viz. tolera-
tion, mutual respect, and practical co-operation.

It means also that we should deign to see facts as
they are. For in point of fact, the protest against the
tyrannous demand for rigid uniformity is in a sense
superfluous. No two men ever really think (and still
less feel) alike, even when they profess allegiance to the

I PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 19

self-same formulas. Nor does the universe appear to
contain the psychological machinery by which such
uniformity could be secured. In short, despite all
bigotry, a philosophy is always in the last resort the
theory of a life, and not of life in general or in the
abstract.

But though Pragmatism and Humanism are only
methods in themselves, it should not be forgotten (i) that
methods may be turned into metaphysics by accepting them
as ultimate. Whosoever is wholly satisfied by a method
may adopt it as his metaphysic, just as he may adopt
the working conceptions of a science. Both Pragmatism
and Humanism, therefore, may be held as metaphysics :
this will induce no difference in their doctrines, but only
in the attitude towards them.

(2) Methods may have metaphysical affinities. Thus
our last definition of Pragmatism conceived it as derivative
from a voluntarist metaphysic. Humanism, similarly,
may be affiliated to metaphysical personalism.

(3) Methods may point, more or less definitely, to
certain metaphysical conclusions. Thus Pragmatism may
be taken to point to the ultimate reality of human
activity and freedom,^ to the plasticity and incompleteness
of reality," to the reality of the world-process ' in time,'
and so forth. Humanism, in addition, may point to the
personality of whatever cosmic principle we can postu-
late as ultimate, and to its kinship and sympathy with
man.

Clearly, therefore, there is no reason to apprehend
that the growth of the new methods of philosophizing
will introduce monotonous uniformity into the annals of
philosophy. ' Systems ' of philosophy will abound as
before, and will be as various as ever. But they will
probably be more brilliant in their colouring, and more
attractive in their form. For they will certainly have to
be put forward, and acknowledged, as works of art that
bear the impress of a unique and individual soul. Such
has always been their nature, but when this is frankly

^ Cp. Essay xviii. - Cp. Essay xix.

20 STUDIES IN HUMANISM r

recognized, we shall grow more tolerant and more
appreciative. Only we shall probably be less impressed,
and therefore less tormented, than now, by unclear thinking
and bad writing which try to intimidate us by laying
claim to absolute validity. Such ' metaphysics ' we shall
gently put aside.

It is clear, therefore, that Metaphysic also must hence-
forth submit its pretensions to the pragmatic test. It will
not be valued any longer because of the magniloquent
obscurity with which it speaks of unfathomable mysteries
which have no real concern with human life, or because it
paints fancy pictures which mean nothing to any but their
painters. It will henceforth have to test all its assumptions
by their working, and above all to test the assumption that
' intellectual satisfaction ' is something too sacred to be
analysed or understood. It will have to verify its con-
jectures by propounding doctrines which can be acted
on, and tested by their consequences. And that not
merely in an individual way. For subjective value any
philosophy must of course have — for its inventor. But a
valid metaphysic must make good its claims by greater
usefulness than that. It need not show itself ' cogent '
to all, but it must make itself acceptable to reasonable
men, willing to give a trial to its general principles.

Such a valid metaphysic does not exist at present.
But there is no reason why it should not come into
being. It can be built up piecemeal bit by bit, by the
discovery that truths which have been found useful in the
sciences may be advantageously taken as ultimate, and
combined into a more and more harmonious system.
The opposite procedure, that of jumping to some vast
uncomprehended generality by an a priori intuition,^ and
then finding that it does not connect up with real life, is
neither scientifically tolerable, nor emotionally edifying

1 It matters not at all what that intuition is. Whether we proclaim that
All is ' Matter," or ' Spirit," or ' God," we have said nothing, until we have
made clear what ' God," ' Spirit,' and ' Matter ' are in their application to
our actual experience, and wherein one practically differs from, and excels,
the other. But it is just at this point that intuitions are wont to fail their
votaries, and to leave them descanting idly on the superiority of one synonym
of ' the blessed word Mesopotamia ' over the others.

I PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM 21

in the end. All experience hitherto has proved it a
delusion. The procedure of a valid metaphysical con-
struction must be essentially ' inductive,' and gradual
in its development. For a perfect and complete meta-
physic is an ideal defined only by approximation, and
attainable only by the perfecting of life. For it would
be the theory of such a perfect life, which no one as yet
is contriving to live.

FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS^

ARGUMENT

§ I. The value of classical studies and their relation to a ' liberal' education.
§ 2. The paradox of Greek thought — its development from science to
theology. Philosophic pantheism obvious, but anti-scientific. Why did
the Greek gods preserve their personality ? § 3. The genesis of Science.
Anaximander's 'Darwinism.' Why so little experimentation? § 4.
The great Sophistic movement humanistic, but not therefore anti-
scientific. § 5. Protagoras's great discovery. Is the individual man
the measure of all things? The transition from 'men' to 'man,' from
subjective to objective truth. Protagoras's speech in the Theaetetus.
Its humanism is not scepticism, nor has Plato refuted it, or understood
it. § 6. Plato's anti-empirical bias leads to misconstruction of Prota-
goras and Heraclitus, and ultimately ruins Greek science. § 7. Plato's
genius and personality. § 8. The scientific importance and anti-scientific
'nfluence of the Ideal Theory. § 9. The difficulty of formulating it.
Had Plato two theories ? The ' later theory of Ideas ' criticized. It
does not remove the difficulties of the 'earlier.' § 10. The unity of
Plato's theory defended. § 11. Its primary aspect is the logical, and
this too is the source of its metaphysical embarrassments. § 12. The
Idea as Plato's solution of the predication problem, and as the mediation
between Heraclitus and Parmenides. Ideas as ' systems ' and as
necessarily connected inter se. § 13. The culmination of the Ideal
system in the Idea of Good, a teleological postulate. Its degeneration
into an abstract unity under mathematical analogies. § 14. Plato's
misconception of the Idea's relation to perception leads to a reduction
of the sensible to a 'non-existent,' and an impossibility of knowing it.
His confusion of ethical with epistemological 'sensationalism.' § 15.
From this epistemological dualism arises the metaphysical chasm between
the Real and the Sensible. It is at bottom a collapse of intellectualistic
logic. § 16. The 'transcendence' of the Idea as its translation into
metaphysics. Plato well aware of its failure, but unable to remedy it
with his notion of the Concept. Platonism has two worlds only from
its critics' standpoint, but relapses into Eleaticism. On which side of
• Plato's chasm ' should we stand ? Aristotle's inability to extricate himself.
§ 17. The functional nature of the concept not perceived by Plato or
his followers. His two mistakes : abstraction (i) from personality ; (2)

^ §§ 2-9 of this essay are a considerably expanded form of part of an article
which appeared in the Qiiartei-ly Review for January 1906.

II FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 23

from the growth of truth. Concepts are not immutable unless they are
cut loose from human knowing, and then they become useless, because in-
applicable to our knowing. Human concepts grow and are not ' eternal.'
But ideal knowledge is defined as something humanly unattainable.
Intellectualism is less clear-sighted Platonism. § i8. 'Back to Plato,' there-
fore, and from Plato to Protagoras, lest knowledge be dehumanized.

^5 I. An essay on Greek Philosophy should nowadays
be prefaced by an excursus on classical education —
desperate as its vindication may appear. For the only
thing which can justify our continued preoccupation with
the past as the staple procedure of a ' liberal ' education
is that the past should not be studied entirely for its own
sake, i.e. in a merely historical spirit. This latter notion
is one which never stands in need of support : academic
pedantry may always be trusted to champion it. A host
of specialists is ever eager to exaggerate the modicum of
truth which it conceals, and it is notorious that if only
the specialists are allowed to have their way, they will
not only ruin every system of education ever devised,
but will themselves become so triumphantly unintelligible
and illiterate, as to render indigestible and innutritious
every science and every study society has endowed them
to cultivate. It is probably by this senseless policy of
insisting (falsely) on the uselessness of knowledge in
order to arouse intellectual interests in the young, that
these same sages have fostered the ' deficient interest in
the things of the mind,' which they are wont to deplore.
Human indolence does indeed naturally shrink from the
labour of learning, but there would probably be far less
ground for complaint, if the victims of their educational
prejudices were allowed to learn how knowledge is the
most useful and salutary of all things, and shown the
uses even of the staple methods. Nay, if the peda-
gogical value of interest were more extensively exploited,
even the optimistic dictum of Aristotle that ' all men
by nature desire knowledge ' might cease to seem a
pathetic paradox.

Such a policy, moreover, would afford far less nutri-
ment to the ' sordid utilitarianism,' which it is so customary
and so hypocritical to denounce, than the working of our

24 STUDIES IN HUMANISM n

actual institutions. For inasmuch as it is not considered
legitimate to lay stress on the intrinsic usefulness of know-
ing, on the value of language as our means of communi-
cating with each other, on the value of science as our
means of controlling the world, on the value of philosophy
as our means of controlling ourselves, extraneous motives
of a far baser kind have to be supplied to arouse the
interest which sets in motion the wheels of our educa-
tional machinery. All the talk about the nobility of a dis-
interested pursuit of learning is almost wholly cant. In
point of fact ' liberal education ' in England at the present
day is liberally endowed ; it rests not on the legendary ' love
of knowledge for its own sake,' but on the twin pillars of
Commercialism and Competition, buttressed perhaps in
some few cases by the additional support of snobbishness.
These two major motives have been combined in the crafty
device of ' scholarships,' awarded on the results of competi-
tive examination, and their operation on the minds alike
of parents and of children is practically irresistible. This
coarsely and artificially utilitarian system extends from the
preparatory school right through the public schools and
universities, gathering momentum as it rises, until finally,
in the great Civil Service examination, the reward of
successful competition is an honourable career for life !
Surely such inducements would be sufficient to sustain
any amount of nonsense ; they would render useful, and
therefore interesting (at all events pro tern.), the silliest
subtleties, the most abstruse absurdities which an ex-
■ aminer's intelligence may have succeeded in excogitating !
^ If the advocates of * useless knowledge ' had not sternly
suppressed their (* useless ' ?) sense of humour, they would
surely wear a perpetual Roman augur's smile at the
exquisite figure which our ' liberal ' studies cut, so long
as, e.g. in the Oxford ' school ' of ' Humaner Letters '
three-fourths, and in that of ' Pure ' Mathematics practi-
cally all, of the students are paid anything between thirty
and two hundred pounds per annum to tolerate and to
abate their vaunted ' uselessness.'

The natural and true way of making a classical educa-

II FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 25

tion really ' liberal ' is not to bolster it up with scholarships
and prizes, but to make it as intrinsically useful as possible
as a means of appreciating language, that indispensable
instrument of human thought and intercourse, of develop-
ing the power of using it, and of bracing and expanding
the mind by training it to trace the interesting and in-
structive connexions and contrasts which exist between
ancient and modern civilization. It is, moreover, to its
efficiency in performing these very functions that the
Oxford School of Literae Humaniores owes its actual
value as an educational instrument. As a training school
of a ' disinterested ' interest in knowledge it is a complete
and utter failure; as a mode of mental training its success
and survival is a marvel, more particularly to those who
are in a position to appreciate the constant struggle to
preserve its value, and are aware of the perils which con-
tinually beset its existence.

§ 2. The above considerations must form my apology
for venturing upon a sketch of some important points in
the history of Greek thought which have hitherto been
neglected, or, perhaps, were not visible from the stand-
points hitherto adopted. Their discussion will display a
certain unity, owing to the fact that they may all be
grouped around the problems presented by the genesis,
the growth, the arrest, and the decline of Greek science,
and their outcome will be to exhibit Plato as the great
fountain-head of intellectualism, his victory over Protagoras
as the great clog upon science, his failure to give a true
account of the function of the Concept and of the nature of
Truth, as the secret canker vitiating all philosophy, and a
return to the frankly human viewof knowledge advocated by
Protagoras as the surest guarantee of philosophic progress.

Let us begin, then, by observing that the paradoxical
character of Greek genius shows itself also in the course
of Greek thought ; for in Greece the development of
thought reverses the direction taken in all other nations.
It begins, apparently, where the others end, and it ends
where the others begin. Broadly viewed, the movement
of Greek thought is from science to theology, or rather

26 STUDIES IN HUMANISM a

theosophy ; elsewhere it starts from theology and struggles
towards science. The emancipation from theological pre-
occupations with which the scientific philosophy of the
lonians appears to have started, is an extraordinary and
unique phenomenon. In Egypt, in Babylonia, in India,
reflection never frees itself from the fascinations of religi-
ous speculation.

The religious independence of Greek thought, therefore,
is utterly unparalleled. It is, moreover, psychologically
unnatural. The natural development of a polytheistic
religion when transformed by reflexion is not into science,
but into philosophic pantheism. The interest in the problem
of life arises in a religious context ; what more natural,
therefore, than that the answers given should be couched
in the familiar religious terms ? The more so that these
answers look easy and seem adequate. It is easy enough
for thought to fuse the multitude of discrepant deities, the
dfievrjva Kaprjva of imperfectly personified gods, into one
vast power which pervades the universe, ttoWojv ovofidrmv
fiopcfirj fiLa. This process is typically shown in the evolu-
tion of Hindu thought. And pantheism is not only easy,
but also specious. At the various stages of its develop-
ment it seems capable of satisfying all man's spiritual
needs ; to the end it satisfies one craving of, perhaps the
most reflective, souls. Whoever conceives religion as
nothing more than an emotional appreciation of the unity
of the universe may rest content with pantheism, and even
derive from its obliteration of all differences the most
delirious satisfaction. Whoever demands more, such as,
e.g-., a moral order and a guiding and sympathizing per-
sonality, will ultimately fail to get it from any theory
which equates God with the totality of being.

But a mighty effort at clear and persistent thinking is
needed to perceive these limitations ; and, scientifically at
first, pantheism seems adequate enough. It needs a very
clear grasp of the nature of science to perceive that the
One is as useless scientifically as it is morally, because a
principle which explains everything, whether it be called
' God ' or ' the devil,' or conceived as the ' higher synthesis '

11 FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 27

of both, really explains nothing. If, however, we seem
to ourselves to have reached the conviction that the one
thing really worth the toil of knowing is that all is
' Brahma,' or ' the Absolute,' and that plurality is but
phenomenal illusion, why should we trouble laboriously
to unravel the intricate web of a multitude of partial
processes, to study the relations of a multitude of partial
beings, as if they were real and important and independent,
and as if anything they could do or suffer could in any
wise affect the absolute and immutable truth of the one
reality ? Pantheism, therefore, is prejudicial to science ;
and Greece was fitted to become the birthplace of science
by the fortunate circumstance that in Greece alone philo-
sophic pantheism was developed too late to destroy all
the germs of scientific progress. It makes its appearance,
indeed, in the Eleatic philosophy, significantly enough dis-
guising its anti-scientific bias in the delightfully stimulating
paradoxes of Zeno ; but its sterilizing influence could never
overpower the original Greek tendency to pry unceasingly
into every fact that an infinitely various world presented.
We may, therefore, regard the non-religious and non-
pantheistic character of early Greek philosophy as con-
nected with the genesis of science, and also connect these
anomalies with the striking uniqueness of all the really
important things in history. Science, like civilization, has
only been invented once. Monotheism arises similarly
through an anomaly of religious development which, else-
where than in Judaea, reached unity only by sacrificing
personality. A similar refusal to give up the personality
of the divine probably underlies the failure of philosophic
reflection to transform Greek popular religion into a pan-
theism. But in Greece the motives for this refusal were
certainly different. The philosophers could not effect a
unification of Olympus, because the personality of the
gods was strong enough to resist the merger. But this
personality did not rest on moral or intellectual con-
ceptions ; it was essentially an cesthetic or artistic thing.
The clearness and intensity with which the Greeks con-
ceived their gods under definitely sensuous shapes is one

28 STUDIES IN HUMANISM ii

of the earliest and most distinctive features of their
religion. Homer already could use the divine shapes as
standards for the description of human beings. Agamem-
non, he once tells us {Iliad, ii. 478-9), went to battle with
head and eyes like thunder-loving Zeus, with a waist like
Ares, and a chest like Poseidon.

Thus the gods possessed an artistic, humanly beauti-
ful personality, uncorrupted by the unaesthetic symbolism
which encumbers Hindu deities with superfluous limbs.
And we may be sure that, as Greek sculpture developed
its glories, it would become less and less plausible to
confound Apollo with Ares, or Athene with Aphrodite.
If, therefore, the philosophers had ever attempted to
interpret the gods into a unity, they would have found
that Zeus, for example, was so essentially the god with
hyacinthine locks that it was absurd to transfigure him
into a cosmic unity. To do them justice, they never
seriously attempted it ; they were glad enough that the
lack of organization of the popular cults and the non-
existence of a professional priesthood permitted them to
pursue their scientific researches with only nominal and
ritual concessions to the established forms of divine
worship.

§ 3. Science, therefore, owes its genesis to a curious and
unique emancipation from the pressure of religious problems,
and this dominance of the scientific interest in the early
Greek philosophy is well brought out in Prof. Gomperz's
admirable Greek Thinkers. In dealing with the whole of
pre-Platonic philosophy the historian is, however, woefully
hampered by the fragmentary condition of his material.
He has to reconstruct systems of thought out of scanty
references and more or less casual quotations in later
writers, who are usually biassed, and often careless or
incompetent. The palaeontologist's task in reconstructing
fossils from a tooth or a bone is child's-play in comparison ;
for the bones, at least, of PitJieca7it}iropus erectus (the Miss-
ing Link) cannot lie, while in Greece the Cretans had many
rivals.

At times, therefore, the process of writing a history of

II FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 29

early Greek philosophy rather resembles that of making
bricks without clay out of the scattered straws of a dubious
tradition. At others we get singularly suggestive but
ambiguous glimpses, which suggest alternative interpreta-
tions, between which it is impossible to decide. For
example, our accounts of Anaximander's doctrine are so
wretchedly inadequate that we may please ourselves as
to how far we believe him to have carried his anticipa-
tions of Darwinism. If we choose to suppose that the
tatters of his reasoning, which their very quaintness has
preserved, were merely childish guesses of an infant science,
we shall regard these anticipations merely as coincidences.
If, on the other hand, we note the singular acuteness of
the observations, and the cogency of the reasoning which
they still display, there is little to hinder us from hailing
him as the scientific discoverer of organic evolution.
Gomperz inclines rather to the former view, but he might
have changed his opinion if he had noted how clearly
and completely Anaximander anticipated the argument
for evolution from the helplessness of the human infant,
by which an American Spencerian, John Fiske, gained
great glory.^ Our record runs as follows : ^ — " Further,
he says that man originally was generated from animals
of a different kind, seeing that other animals are quickly
able to manage for themselves, whereas man alone
requires protracted nursing. Wherefore he could not
as such originally have been preserved." How could
the case be put more concisely or scientifically ?

The scientific promise of the Ionian philosophy is so
great that it becomes a legitimate perplexity to account
for the fact that it was so imperfectly fulfilled, and that,
after making steady progress for three centuries, science
should begin to languish shortly after Aristotle had
codified knowledge and apparently provided the sciences
with a firm platform for more extensive operations. It
is part of the same puzzle that the Greeks, though, as
Prof. Gomperz is careful to notice, they undoubtedly ex-

1 Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, ii. 343.

2 Plutarch Strom. 2, Doxogr. 579, 17.

30 STUDIES IN HUMANISM n

perimented,^ never did so systematically, and that, in
spite of their devotion to mathematics and enthusiasm
for ' measure,' they never had recourse to exact measure-
ments nor constructed instruments of precision. Why, a
modern is disposed to wonder, when it had been perceived
that ' all things flow,' was not the next question, ' at what
rate ? ' Why, when it had been laid down that ' man is
the measure of all things,' was not the next question,
' How, then, does he measure ? ' It is idle to suggest that
the Greeks lacked instruments. Had they wished to ex-
periment they would have constructed them.

We believe that it is possible to point out some, at
least, of the influences which conduced to the disappoint-
ing end of Greek philosophy. Experimentation demands
manual dexterity and familiarity with mechanisms, as well
as ingenuity. In a slave-holding society, however, any-
thing savouring of manual training is despised as illiberal
and ' banausic' ' No gentleman,' Plutarch naively tells
us, ' however much he may delight in the Olympian
Zeus or the Argive Hera, would like to have been their
sculptor, a Phidias or a Polyclitus.' Whence we may
infer the depth of the contempt for experiment enter-
tained by a nobleman of Plato's distinction.

§ 4. The rise of Sophistry is sometimes regarded as
another reason for the progressive alienation from science
exhibited by Greek thought. And there is perhaps a
certain measure of truth in this. The natural acuteness
of the Greek mind and the great practical value of forensic
and political speechifying no doubt tended to an over-
development of dialectical habits of thought. As Prof.
Gomperz says : " " The preference for dialectic expressed
here and elsewhere in Plato bespeaks an intellectual atti-
tude which is almost the opposite of that of modern
science. For him all that is given in experience counts
as a hindrance and a barrier to be broken through : zve
are learning to content ourselves more and more with
what is so given." But, as his example shows, it would
be most unjust to render the Sophists responsible for this.

1 Greek Thirtkers, i. 291. ^ /_^^_ ^it. iii. 88.

n FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 31

The great humanistic movement of the fifth century B.C.,
of which they were the leaders, is now beginning to
be appreciated at its true value. Gomperz, following
Grote, points out that the source of the whole develop-
ment lay in the political situation. The rise of democracies
rendered a higher education and a power of public speak-
ing a sine qua non of political influence, and — what
acted probably as a still stronger incentive — of the safety
of the life and property, particularly of the wealthier
classes. The Sophists, * half professors, half journalists,'
or as one might perhaps say with a still closer approxi-
mation to modern conditions, ' university extension lectures
hampered by no university,' professed to supply this
great requisite of practical success. Their professional
success attests the solid value of their instructions. It
seems almost incredible that an age in which it was
deemed revolutionary to be educated, and monstrous to
have to pay your teachers, when it had not yet become
a fashionable pastime to go to college, when pupils were
allowed and encouraged to appraise their professors' in-
structions at their spiritual value and to remunerate them
accordingly,^ should have been the Golden Age of the
teaching profession, in which rara temporuin felicitate
' Sophists ' could grow rich by intellectual labour.
Yet Plato's glowing descriptions of the numbers and
enthusiasm of the youths who flocked to hear the great
Sophists are too embittered by envy to be suspected of
exaggeration. The fact, moreover, was that the Sophists
had discovered for their pupils a way both to honour
and to safety. As Gomperz tersely puts it (i. 417), in
so litigious and quarrelsome a place as Athens their
function was analogous to that of ' professors of fencing
in a community where the duel is an established institu-
tion.' Nowadays the rich no longer become lawyers :
they hire them. But the lucrative profession of the law
had not yet been invented.

The result was a great development of rhetoric and
dialectic, to which, it may be noted, Socrates (whom it

1 An astonishing custom of Protagoras.

32 STUDIES IN HUMANISM n

is quite unhistorical to oppose to the Sophists ^) appears
to have contributed the invention of the art of cross-
examination, which Plato, when it suits him, denounces
as ' eristic' Naturally, however, this sophistic education
was not popular with those who were too poor or too
niggardly to avail themselves of it, i.e. with the extreme
democrats and the old conservatives ; it was new, and it
seemed to bestow an unfair and undemocratic advantage
on those who had enjoyed it. Further reasons for the
bad name acquired by the Sophists are to be found in
the jealous polemic directed by the philosophers (especially
by Plato) against rival teachers and in what Prof.
Gomperz calls 'the caprice of language' (i. 422). This,
however, is more properly an accident in the history of
logic. When the Sophists first began to reflect on reason-
ing they had to make logic along with rhetoric and
grammar. They naturally fell into many errors, which
their successors gradually corrected. And so what was of
value in their logical researches came to be appropriated
by later logicians (Plato and, above all, Aristotle), while
their crude failures clung to them and engendered the
mistaken impression that ' Sophists ' were men foolish
enough to specialize in bad reasoning.

§ 5. Intrinsically, then, there was no reason why this
great intellectual movement should have injured scientific
interests. It ought more properly to have broadened its
basis by adding the psychological and moral inquiries,
the sciences of man, to those of nature ; and perhaps there
actually was a chance of events taking this course if only

1 In Plato's dialogues he converses with them on amicable and familiar terms.
In Aristophanes he is actually selected as their representative, largely, no doubt,
by reason of his well-known ugliness and the aid his physiognomy afforded to a
comic mask, while the nature of the conservative prejudices is revealed by the
pursuits for which he is derided ; they are scientific rather than philosophic, and
nowadays, e.g. , an entomologist who had measured the length of a flea's leap
would be listened to with respect, and perhaps quoted in Tit-Bits. The fact,
again, that his conversations were probably too rambling and unsystematic to earn
money can just as little be held to constitute an essential difference between
Socrates and the Sophists, as the fact that Socrates was an amateur who neglected
his duties (as a sculptor and a husband and a father) in order to teach, while the
Sophists were professional teachers who, apparently, fulfilled theirs. In short, as
Socrates had not started a regular philosophic school like Plato and Aristotle,
there was no reason for any antagonism between him and the Sophists on account
of the struggle for pupils.

II FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 33

the great idea of Protagoras, the greatest of the Sophists,
had been scientifically interpreted and properly elaborated.
His famous dictum that ' man is the measure of all things '
must be ranked even above the Delphic ' Know thyself,'
as compressing the largest quantum of vital meaning into
the most compact form.

It must be admitted, of course, that we do not know its
exact context and scope, and so can interpret it in various
ways. But, however we understand it, it is most im-
portant and suggestive, and, in every way but one, it is a
fundamental truth. That one way, of course, is Plato's,
and of it more anon. It might have proved impossible
to refute his version of Protagoras, if it had not lapsed
into discrepancies within itself. Even as it stands it is
plausible enough to have mostly been accepted without
cavil, and even those who realized the danger of accepting
Plato's polemics without a large grain of salt have been
beguiled by it. It is needless, however, with Gomperz, to
adopt the expedient of denying the plain application of
the words to the individual, and to insist that ' man ' in
the dictum must be understood generically. This would
render the dictum as tame as Plato rendered it nonsensical.
Nor does it follow that Plato's rendering is authentic.
Indeed, we take it that the extraordinary value and
suggestiveness of Protagoras's dictum largely reside in the
conciseness which has led to these divergent interpretations.

Their great mistake is that each should lay claim to
exclude the other. For this procedure, however, there is
neither logical nor linguistic warrant. Protagoras may
well have chosen an ambiguous form in order to indicate
both the subjective and the objective factor in human
knowledge and the problem of their connexion. Initially,
no doubt, his dictum emphasizes the subjective factor.
And this is most important. For whatever appears to
each that really is — to him. And also to others, in so far
as they have to deal with him and his ideas. Hallucina-
tions, illusions, whims, individual preferences and private
judgments, idiosyncrasies of every kind, are real, and woe
betide any thinker or manager of men who fancies that

34 STUDIES IN HUMANISM n

he can ignore them with impunity ! It is a fact, more-
over, that individuals are infinitely different, and that the
more carefully they are studied the less true does it seem
to lump them all together. To have been the first to
have an inkling of all this was Protagoras's great achieve-
ment, for the sake of which science owes him an eternal
debt of gratitude.

The subjective interpretation, therefore, of the dictum
embodies a great scientific truth ; and it is astonishing
that this should have been ignored in order to denounce
it as subversive of all truth, especially by thinkers
who, starting uncritically from the opposite assumption,
have themselves completely failed to develop a coherent
theory of truth. Surely was there no occasion to
conceive it as denying what it did not state directly, the
objectivity of truth, and to assume Protagoras to have
been unaware of this. The fact that a man makes a great
discovery does not necessarily deprive him of all common
sense. And that there is objective truth, in some sense
' common ' to mankind, is a matter of common notoriety.
The difficulty about ' objective truth ' lies, not in observing
the fact, but in devising a philosophic theory of its pos-
sibility ; and concerning this philosophers are still at
variance. That reality for us is relative to our faculties
is likewise a clear truth which must be assumed even in
questioning it.

Man, therefore, is the measure also in the generic sense
of man ; and it is very unlikely that Protagoras should
have overlooked these obvious facts. Nor had he any
motive to ignore them. It is most likely, therefore, that
he would placidly have accepted the truisms which are
commonly urged against him. His Humanism was wide
enough to embrace both • man ' and ' men,' and it could
include the former because it had included the latter.

There only remains, therefore, the question of what
is the connexion between the two senses in which the
dictum is true. What, in other words, is the transition
from subjective truth for the individual to objective truth
for all ? That we must pass from the one to the other.

II FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 35

and succeed in doing so, is obvious ; but how we do so
forms a very pretty problem. And to any scientifically
disposed mind it should have been clear that here was
a splendid subject for research, e.g. along the lines since
taken by modern psychological experiment. Conceived,
therefore, in a scientific spirit, the Protagorean dictum
yields great openings for science.

But is there any reason to suppose that Protagoras
himself conceived it so, and had formed any ideas as to
how objective truth arose ? Constructively the tolerant
humaneness of his temper (even in Plato's account), his
' strictly empirical method,' ^ and the caution and candour
implied in his complaint (for which he suffered martyrdom),^
that he had never been able to obtain trustworthy informa-
tion about the gods, almost entitles us to answer both
these questions in the affirmative.

But much more direct evidence can be extracted from
Plato's own polemic. In the Theaetetus (166-8) Prota-
goras is represented as replying, that though one man's
perceptions could not be t)'uer than another man's they
might yet be better. So far, therefore, from admitting
that on his theory men, pigs, and dog-headed baboons
must all alike and equally be the measure of all things,
the Platonic ' Protagoras ' very lucidly explains that the
wise man is he who, when something appears amiss and
is ' bad ' to any one, is able to alter it so as to make it
appear to be ' good ' to him instead, and to bring him
from a bad to a better state of mind. In other words, he
is represented as recognizing distinctions of value among the
individual perceptions to all of which ' reality ' is conceded.

And not only that. There are distinct traces in that
marvellous speech on behalf of Protagoras of other doctrines
to which attention has only been recalled in the last few
years, (i) It is plainly hinted throughout that the attain-

^ Gomperz, i. 455.

- A fact which, like the similar cases of Anaxagoras and Aristotle, E. Caird
appears to have forgotten when he says, in his Evolution of Theology in tlie Greek
Philosophers (i. p. 44), that Socrates was "the only martyr of philosophy in the
ancient world, the only man who can be said to have suffered for the freedom of
thought. " What rendered the case of Socrates different in its issue was merely
his obstinate refusal to go into exile.

36 STUDIES IN HUMANISM ii

ment of wisdom is not a matter of idle speculation, but
of altering reality, within oneself and without. (2) There
are repeated protests against the dialectical spirit which
argues solely from the customary uses of words, and un-
critically accepts verbal ' contradictions,' as if they proved
more than the incompleteness of the human knowledge
which has been embodied in the words. And (3) in one
or two passages (167 A, 168 A) the point, though some-
what obscured in the Platonic statement, seems genuinely
to be a repudiation of the intellectualistic trick of repre-
senting all moral shortcomings as defects of intelligence.
The diseased man, ' Protagoras ' protests, is not merely
' uninstructed ' ; he has to experience a change of heart.
Nor is education merely intellectual instruction ; it is the
making of a new man and the getting rid of an old self.
These hints are all of a tantalizing brevity, but they evince
a depth of moral insight with which nothing else in the
orthodox Greek ethics, corrupted as they were by intel-
lectualism and enervated by aestheticism, can at all compare.
And they very distinctly savour of the moral fervour of
St. Paul.

The doctrine as a whole, however, is perfectly clear,
rational, and consistent. It differs from that of modern
Humanism, apparently, only in the terminological point
that ' true ' and ' false ' are not regarded as values essentially
cognate with ' good ' and ' bad,' or, in other words, that
they are used primarily of the individual claims to cog-
nitive value rather than of their subsequent recognition.
But this is a secondary divergence, if such it is. It is
quite possible that Protagoras already perceived the
' ambiguity of truth,' ^ and that his distinction has merely
been blurred in the Platonic statement, which is clearly in-
complete. As regards the necessity of altering reality, and
of connecting this process with the making of truth, and the
impossibility of reducing evil to ignorance, Protagorean and
Neo-Protagorean Humanism would appear to be at one.

The only question, therefore, that remains is, how far
this whole doctrine can be transferred from the Platonic

1 Cf. Essay v.

n FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 17

to the historical Protagoras, and as in the similar case of
the Platonic 'Socrates,' complete cogency cannot be attained
by arguments on this point. The historic Socrates wrote
nothing ; the magnum opus of the historic Protagoras, his
book on Truth, has been destroyed. It began too incisively
with a declaration that its subject was logic, not theology ;
so the Athenians set the hangman to burn it. If any copies
escaped him — as is improbable because their owners,though
pupils of Protagoras, would be in sympathy with the
oligarchs who persecuted him — they soon perished of
neglect during the long reign of Platonic intellectualism.
And so the combined bigotries of vulgar piety and dog-
matic philosophy have deprived us of what was probably
one of the great monuments of Greek genius.

Nevertheless, it seems extremely probable, on internal
evidence, that the ' defence of Protagoras,' so far as it goes,
embodies genuine doctrines of his, greatly curtailed, no
doubt, and perhaps somewhat mangled in the reproduction.
For the reason, mainly, that Plato manifestly has not
understood its argument at all. Nowhere else does he
betray the slightest suspicion of the doctrine that the
nature of truth is essentially dependent upon the ' altera-
tion ' of reality. Had he examined it, he could not only
have concluded his Theaetetus with less negative results,
but would have transformed his whole view of know-
ledge. Nowhere else does he perceive the radical vice of
the intellectualistic analysis of wickedness as ignorance.
To the end he retained his faith in the dialectical play
with concepts as the method of penetrating to the secret
of the universe. And, most significantly of all, the recog-
nition by ' Protagoras ' of distinctions of value in percep-
tions is treated as wholly non-existent or unintelligible.
Not only does Plato fail to see that it is a complete
answer to the trivial objections and shallow gibes of his
* Socrates,' not only does he fail to answer it, but he
feels that he must divert attention from the plea of
' Protagoras ' by recourse to the most artistically brilliant
digressions. The whole subsequent course of the dis-
cussion shows that he had not the faintest idea of the

38 STUDIES IN HUMANISM n

scope and significance of the argument he had stated. It
is clear that if he had grasped the meaning of his ' Prota-
goras,' the whole argument of his Theaetetus would have
had to proceed and end differently. It seems incredible,
therefore, that Plato should have invented a distinction
which he did not know how to handle, and it remains
that he was really candid enough to reproduce genuine
contentions of Protagoras.

If, then, this doctrine that truth is a valuation, and to be
discriminated from ' error ' as * good ' from ' bad,' can really
be attributed to Protagoras, it is easy for us to see how it
might provide himwith the means of passingfrom subjective
to objective judgments in a perfectly valid and scientific
manner. For if there is a mass of subjective judgments
varying in value, there must ensue a selection of the more
valuable and serviceable, which will, in consequence, sur-
vive and constitute growing bodies of objective truth,
shared and agreed upon by practically all. It is highly
probable that the general agreement about sense per-
ceptions has actually been brought about by a process of
this sort ; ^ and it is still possible to observe how society
establishes an ' objective ' order by coercing or cajoling
those who incline to divergent judgments in moral or
aesthetic matters. And, though no doubt Protagoras
himself could not have put the point as clearly as the
discovery of natural selection enables us to do, it seems
probable that he saw, at least, the beginnings of the very
real connexion between the two meanings of his dictum.

§ 6. Plato's interpretation, therefore, of the Protagorean
dictum is merely a trick of his anti-empiricist polemic,
and it may be very closely paralleled by similar charges
which have been brought against modern revivals of
Protagoreanism, and are not likely similarly to prevail
only because they cannot command the services of a
Plato and an executioner. To say that ' man is the
measure of all things ' necessarily conducts to subjectivism
and to scepticism is simply not true.

The truth is rather that the way to scepticism lies

1 Cp. pp. 316-20.

n FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 39

through a denial of this dictum. To a mind, then, desirous
of scientific knowledge the dictum should be fertile only
of a multitude of instructive observations and experiments.
Unfortunately this was not the spirit in which it was
received. A spirit of dialectical refutation cared nothing
for the varieties of physical endowment and of psychical
reaction ; it took no interest in the problems and methods
of scientific measurement. The question ' If man is the
measure, then how do we manage to measure ? ' was not
raised. What was raised was the unfair, untrue, and
uninstructive cry, ' then knowledge becomes impossible ! '
The levity with which this outcry rises to the lips of a
priori metaphysicians is as extraordinary as the vitreous-
ness of the abodes which ultimately house their own con-
victions. It has often been remarked that the * deceptions '
and ' contradictions ' of the senses, which, to the ancients,
provided only texts for sceptical lamentation and excuses
for taking refuge in ' suprasensible ' Ideas (which were
really nothing more than the acquired meanings of words),
have yielded to modern energy valuable starting-points
for scientific inquiries. To the dialectical temper the fact
that a stimulus may feel both hot and cold simultaneously
is merely a contradiction ; to the scientific temper it gives a
clue to the discovery of the 'cold' and 'hot' spots of cutaneous
sensibility. Similarly such notions as 'solid solutions,' 'liquid
crystals,' invisible ' light,' divisible ' atoms,' ' unconscious '
mental life, seem mere foolishness until we realize that the
work of science is not to avoid verbal contradiction, but to
frame conceptions by which we can control the facts.

Another parallel is afforded by the treatment of
Heraclitus's great discovery of the universality of process
or change. It too was taken to mean that knowledge
was impossible, as if, forsooth, men were usually altered
beyond recognition overnight, and rivers changed their
courses daily. If the Greeks, instead of indolently content-
ing themselves with a qualitative enunciation of its truth,
had attempted a quantitative estimation of the universal
process, they might have anticipated some of the
most signal triumphs of modern science ; and, it may be

40 STUDIES IN HUMANISM u

added, they would speedily have convinced then:iselves of
the practical innocuousness of the Flux, and perhaps even
have learnt, from the impossibility of any but relative
determinations, that practical limitations and a relation to
practical application are inherent in the very nature of
truth, and that the pretensions of * ideals ' which cannot
be applied, and can only condemn all human experience
as unintelligible, prove nothing but the ludicrous falsity of
such ideals. But this assumes that they wanted to know
and were willing to view these doctrines in a scientific
spirit. And this is just where they lamentably failed.

§ 7. That the Hellenic will to know scientifically gave
out at this point is a fact which must certainly be connected
most vitally with the appearance of the stupendous genius
whom history knows only by his nickname, Plato. This
extraordinary man was equally great as a writer and as
a thinker. He was at once a poet and a philosopher, a
prophet and a professor, an. initiator and an imitator, a
theologian and a sceptic ; and he excelled in all these
parts. Regarded from the literary side he is admirable
as a parodist, as a maker of stories and inventor of fairy-
tales, as a delineator of character, as a critic, as a dissector
of arguments. Regarded as a thinker, he maintains in
equipoise the most contrary excellences. One hardly
knows whether to admire more the grandeur of his con-
structions, or the subtlety of his criticisms, the compre-
hensive sweep of his ' synoptic ' view, or the patience
which descends into the minutest details. Regarded as
a wit, he was capable of the most reckless raillery, the
most savage satire, the gentlest humour, and a persiflage
so graceful, that Aristophanes compared with him seems
coarsely farcical ; and yet in his serious moods he could
reach heights of solemnity in which the slightest hint of
comedy would seem a profanation. In spite, or perhaps
by reason, of a life-long devotion to philosophy, he never
scrupled to deride the pretensions of philosophers. The
most devoted of disciples, he yet became the most potent
of masters. One of the world's great artists, he was yet
one of the most puritanical of the censors of art. The

II FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 41

idealizing apologist of erotic passion, he was also the most
austere of moralists and the eulogist of asceticism. A
typical intellectualist, he was also intensely emotional.
By birth a man of quality, he yet knew how to withdraw
from the world of fashion without offending it ; an
abstainer from political life, he was yet the most inspiring
of radical reformers ; by turns a counsellor of princes and
a recluse in the groves of Academe.

It is plain that no great man has laid upon the world
a harder task in imposing on it * the duty of understand-
ing him ' ; and it is no wonder that posterity has but
imperfectly succeeded. We read his writings, preserved
for us in far more perfect shape than those of any other
ancient thinker, and are plunged in unending perplexities
as to their meaning. We listen to the comments of one
of his immediate pupils, and doubt whether, after eighteen
years of intimacy, Aristotle's genius has comprehended
Plato's. We flatter ourselves that we should understand
him better if we knew more facts about the historical
order of his works and the circumstances which evoked
them, and hope by the minutest tabulation of his tricks
of style to extort the secrets of their history. But Plato
was master of so many styles, and could parody himself
with such consummate ease, that it is no wonder that the
conclusions of ' stylometry ' are dubious, and hardly com-
patible with any coherent view of Plato's philosophic
development. Moreover, even if we knew the facts we
now desiderate, it is quite probable that our perplexities
would only recur in subtler forms. For they ultimately
spring from the personality of their author.

The core of the Platonic problem is Plato's person-
ality, a personality whose diversity and many-sidedness
is the delight of his readers and the despair of his critics.
How can the clumsy canons of a formal criticism ever
determine what degree of seriousness and literality
attaches to any of his statements, and how far its
meaning should be modified by a touch of irony, of
humour, of satire, of imagination ? The simplest even of
Platonic myths is infinitely baffling. Who will undertake

42 STUDIES IN HUMANISM n

to expound its meaning fully, to determine where precisely
its formal teaching melts into its imaginative setting, how
much of its detail was premeditated, how much of it the
spontaneous outgrowth of the fairy tale ? What again
of the dialogue form ? What at any point is the working
compromise between the dogmatic and the dramatic
interest by which the course of the proceedings is deter-
mined ? No one, assuredly, who has ever tried so far to
enter into Plato's spirit as to imitate his literary methods,
will delude himself into thinking that these questions
are ever likely to be answered with exactness. Plato's
personality is far too rich for the precise analysis all
pedants love.

And yet, perhaps, we may observe a conspicuous gap
even in the far- extended spectrum of this giant soul.
It seems incapable of vibrating in response to the
enlightenment of mere empiric fact ; and this defect
has had tremendous consequences. For similarly con-
stituted souls are common ; and Plato has become their
greatest spokesman. Yet the pathetic futility of apriorism
appears again in this, that ultimately the whole world is
empirical and all that therein is. However, therefore,
we may try to hedge round portions of it against the
intrusions of the unexpected, the very facts that our
hedges can withstand intruders, that we desire to keep
them in repair, and that all this will continue to be true,
are as empirical as the greatest brute of a fact against
which our reason sought protection. Of what value, then,
are a priori guarantees, if the continuance of their applica-
bility to experience, and of their own apriority are both
empirical, and can not be guaranteed ?

§ 8. We must affirm, therefore, that Plato's anti-
empirical bias renders him profoundly anti-scientific, and
that his influence has always, openly or subtly, counter-
acted and thwarted the scientific impulse, or at least
diverted it into unprofitable channels. The potency of
this influence may best be gauged by observing how
completely Plato's greatest pupil, Aristotle, has fallen under
his spell. For if ever there was a typically scientific

n FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 43

mind it was Aristotle's. That he should revolt against
his master was inevitable for many reasons. That he
should assail the citadel of Plato's power, the theory of
the ' Ideas,' in which Plato had hypostasized and deified the
instruments of scientific research and uplifted them beyond
the reach of human criticism, evinced a sound strategic
instinct. But in the end his spirit also proved unable to
escape out of the magic circle of conceptual realism,
which he renders more prosaic without making it more
consistent or more adequate to the conduct of life.
Indeed his analytic sharpness, by exaggerating into
opposition the rivalry between practical and theoretic
interests, which Plato had sought to reconcile in too
intellectualist a fashion, probably contributed, much
against his intentions, an essential motive to that aliena-
tion from scientific endeavour which marks the decline
and fall of Greek philosophy.

It has already been suggested that the theory of Ideas
was the fountain-head whence flowed Plato's baleful
influence on the growth of knowledge. This influence
it would be hard to overrate. The cognitive function of
the Concept, which Socrates (if we conceive ourselves to
have any really authentic information about his doctrine)
may perhaps be said to have discovered, was so exalted
and exaggerated by Plato that it became the subtlest and
most dangerous of obstacles to the attainment of the end
it is its proper function to subserve. And so, wherever
there is hypostasization and idolatry of concepts, and
wherever these interpose between the mind and things,
wherever they lead to disparagement of immediate experi-
ence, wherever the stubborn rigidity of prejudice refuses
to adapt itself to the changes of reality, wherever the
delusive answers of an a priori dialectic leave unanswered
questions of inductive research, wherever words lure and
delude, stupefy and paralyse, there Truth is sacrificed to
Plato, even by barbarians who have never heard his
name. The Ideal Theory resembles a stranger tor-
pedo-ray than that to which Plato in the Meno likens
Socrates. Itself one of the great achievements of the

44 STUDIES IN HUMANISM n

human intellect, it both electrifies the mind with brilliant
vistas of suprasensible dominion for the soul, and yet
numbs and paralyses some of its highest functions. For
it deludes us into thinking that man was made for Ideas,
to behold and contemplate them for ever, and not Ideas
for man and by man, to serve the ends of action.

§ 9. Not the least extraordinary fact about this
wondrous theory is that, strictly speaking, we do not
even know what precisely it was. The culminating point
of conceptual Idealism has always been screened by
impenetrable clouds from the gaze of the faithful as of
the profane, and the former have always had to accept
a ' myth ' in lieu of the final revelation of truth absolute.
The justification of this assertion is necessarily somewhat
technical, but will go far to initiate us into the secret of
Plato's fascination.

That there is some ground for doubting whether any
one really knows what exactly the Ideal Theory was,
may be perceived when we ask how many Ideal Theories
Plato really had. For it seems impossible to trace a
single consistent view throughout his writings ; and in
the course of fifty or sixty years of authorship even a
strenuous denier of the Flux may change his views. It
is plain, moreover, that new problems, new difficulties,
new methods, and new points of view sprang up in
Plato's mind, though it is usually hard to determine how
far they modified his earlier convictions. The critics,
however, agree that the Ideal Theory is not one, but
several, and that an earlier may be distinguished from a
later form thereof.

The earlier theory, as described, e.g. by Zeller, forms
the typical or Standard Platonism to which the others
are referred. It is extracted mainly from the Meno, the
Phaedrus, the Phaedo, and the Republic, and is certainly
the most picturesque and fascinating form of conceptual
Idealism. It describes the true home of the soul in a
suprasensible supercelestial world of True Being, where
pure, incorporeal, and without passions, it leads a holy,
blessed, and eternal life, contemplating the beauty and

n FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 45

excellent harmony of the Ideas, the indivisible and im-
mutable archetypes of the fleeting phenomena that flow
in multitudinous confusion before our dazzled senses.
Thence it is driven (by some inscrutable necessity) to
make periodical descents into the perishable world of
Sense, which is not truly real, but is saved from utter
unreality by its relation to the Ideas in which it can
mysteriously ' participate.' To know such a world, but
for the Ideas, would be impossible, and to know is really
to remember these.

The weak point in this theory lies in the difficulty of
conceiving the connexion between the Ideal world and
the phenomenal, i.e. the precise nature of * participation.'
That in some sense Plato felt this weakness is brilliantly
attested by the incisive criticism he inflicts on what
seems to be his own theory in the Parmenides. On the
strength of this it is commonly supposed that Plato must
have altered his views ; and the evolution of his * later
theory of Ideas ' is thought to be traceable in a series of
critical and ' dialectical ' dialogues, which include also the
Theaetetus, the Sophist, and the Politicus,

The puzzle, however, is to find the theory in its developed
form. It must lurk either in what are regarded as his
latest works, the Laws, the Philebus, and the Timaeus, or
in the oral lectures, of which Aristotle's Metaphysics give
a very obscure and polemical account. But the search
through the Laws and the Philebus yields little that is
enlightening, while the Timaeus is so mythical in form
that it is hard — or fatally easy — to find anything therein.
Nevertheless a * later theory of Ideas ' has been extracted
or constructed. Its distinguishing marks are, the substitu-
tion of an ideal exemplar {irapdhecy^ia), which is copied
or imitated by the sensible, for the discarded notion of
' participation ' (/jLe0e^t<;) ; the restriction of Ideas to
' natural kinds ' ; the reduction of ' not-being ' to differ-
ence ; and the recognition of an efficacy or spiritual
activity in the Ideas, which converts them into efficient
causes.

Unfortunately this ' later theory of Ideas ' is by no

46 STUDIES IN HUMANISM ii

means well authenticated. The external evidence is dead
against it. Aristotle also has a notion of a ' later '
Platonic theory. But he represents his aging master,
not as soaring to an absolute idealism, but as sinking
into childish habits of pythagoreanizing. Gomperz points
out ^ that this is confirmed by the growing import-
ance of mathematics shown in the creative operations
of the Timaeus, and in the educational methods of the
Laws, in which they wholly take the place of ' dialectic'
For the restriction of Ideas to ' natural kinds ' some
Aristotelian support may, it is true, be invoked. But is
it not unfortunate for this aspect of the ' later theory of
Ideas ' that in the Pannenides this very procedure should be
derided as a youthful error ? And we shall presently see
reason to doubt whether it is an improvement. In any
case, Aristotle's account of Platonism does not at all
square with the theory of a substantially altered ' later '
theory. The theory he mainly combats is the old one ;
and he parades all the old objections of the Pannenides
without a doubt of their complete relevance,^ nay, with an
air of having invented them himself.^ But to suppose that
Aristotle misunderstood Plato's fundamental doctrine is a
monstrous assumption, And, we may add, a futile one.

^ L.c. iii. 246-47.

- His objection that the Ideas are not efficient causes would be particularly
curious and inept, if Plato had adhered to the alleged discovery of the Sophist
(247 e) that substance is activity, and had thereby anticipated Aristotle's own
conception of ivipyeia. But the context shows that Plato had not overcome the
antithesis of motion and rest, and the whole passage is only one of those which
express his inability to unite the human and the Ideal. Cp. § 17.

^ If we can put the Parnienides so late as 360 B.C., it is just possible that he
did. For we can then read this puzzling dialogue as an attempt by Plato to
abate the conceit of his obstreperous pupil by narrating a fictitious parallel to an
existing situation in the form of a discussion between the venerable ' Parmenides '
and the youthful 'Socrates.' In the self-criticism of 'Parmenides' which
follows, depths of metaphysics are sounded which are intended to make the
objections to the Ideas seem shallow, and to show that their author still retains
his mastery, while an earlier ' Aristotle ' is satirically made to give his later name-
sake a lesson in manners by prettily and amiably answering just what is required,
because, forsooth, he is too ' young ' to raise vexatious objections. But the
dates seem a serious obstacle. For even if it be supposed that the genius ot
Aristotle at twenty-four was capable of propounding posers which the genius 01
Plato could not cope with, this dating of the Parmefiides would leave only a dozen
years of Plato's life for the composition of all his later dialogues. And after all,
if neither Plato nor his school had ever answered the objections of the Parmenides,
Aristotle had a perfect right to reiterate them.

„ FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 47

For it makes out Aristotle to have been either a fool, if
he could not understand it, or a knave, if he knowingly
misrepresented it. Or rather, in this case, he would have
been a fool as well as a knave, if he supposed that his
iniquitous procedure could escape exposure at the hands
of Plato's other pupils.

The ' later theory of Ideas ' appeals essentially to
internal evidence. But here also its case is none too
strong. Gomperz, who is a friendly critic and accepts the
order of the Platonic dialogues which the theory demands,
has to call attention to the persistence of phrases char-
acteristic of the ' earlier ' theory, even in the Tiviaetis. And
Dr. Horn boldly challenges the fashionable placing of
the ' dialectical ' dialogues after the Republic} Far from
agreeing with Gomperz (iii. 357) that the latest of them,
the Statesman, is " manifestly the bridge leading from the
Republic to the Laws" he argues forcibly that it is quite
a preliminary sketch, which would have been pointless after
the Republic. The logical point involved when the same
author treats the same subject twice with more and less
fulness clearly does not admit of absolute decision. The
later version may be either an elaboration of an earlier
sketch or a succinct reference to a fuller treatment.
It is fallacious also to assume that, because a theory
has been remodelled, it has been improved. So here.
Even Gomperz, who believes in a ' later ' theory, but
holds that it did not answer the Parmeizides, and
amounted really to " consigning the Ideas to a sphere of
dignified repose in conferring upon them divine rank," ^
has to admit that in some respects its transformation was
retrograde.^

This possibility is the less negligible because the ' later
theory of Ideas ' comes out very badly under logical
examination. Its advocates seem unable to show us how
it escapes from the dilemmas of the Parnienides. How
does the suggestion that the Ideas are models for sensible
phenomena to ' imitate,' bridge the dualistic chasm between
the worlds of ' reality ' and of ' appearance ' ? If Ideas '

^ Platonstudien, ii. 379 foil. - L.c. iii. 181. ^ L.c. iii. 173.

48 STUDIES IN HUMANISM n

and ' things ' are different in essence and unrelated in
function, how can they be so connected that the things
can take cognizance enough of the Ideas to imitate
them ? In the Timaeus Plato escapes the difficulty by
the divine fiat of his Demiurge ; but this expedient the
modern ' friends of the Ideas ' would certainly condemn
as * mythical.' The question is the more urgent because
somewhere or other it reappears in all systems of con-
ceptual Idealism.^

Moreover, it would seem that this later version of the
Ideas is fatal to their logical function. If phenomena
become intelligible only by being subsumed under con-
cepts, there vttcst be Ideas of whatever can be pre-
dicated, of relations and of artefacts, of hair and dirt
and evil, of doubleness and if-ness ; their restriction to
' natural kinds,' despite its metaphysical attractiveness,
is a gross logical inconsequence. And that a desire
to justify the procedures of predication and to explain
the nature of knowledge was one of the main motives of
the Ideal Theory seems undeniable, although Plato does
not make this as explicit as its metaphysical aspect.
Nor can we be wrong in thinking that he intended it to be
logically,^ as well as metaphysically, a via media between
Eleaticism and Heracliteanism, both of which seemed to
him to render significant assertion incomprehensible.
But to serve this logical purpose the Ideas had to be
conceived after the fashion of his ' earlier ' theory. They
had to be single, stable, self-identical predicates common
{i.e. applicable) to an infinite plurality of particulars.
They had to live in a world apart in order to transcend
the flux that would otherwise have swamped them.
They had to have communion inter se, in order that
the connexions of our predications might be absolutely
validated by conforming to those of their eternal arche-
types. They had to be immutable ; for how else could
truth be absolute ?

Whatever the difficulties, therefore, which they might
seem to involve, they could not be disavowed without,

^ Cp. p. 177. - Especially in the Theaetetus.

n FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 49

in Plato's way of thinking, abolishing the very notion of
truth and all knowledge of reality. It is quite probable,
therefore, that, despite the candour of the Pannenides, he
never really surrendered to criticism, and that all the
objections he encountered only seemed to him to proceed
from a failure to reach his standpoint, and to argue logical
incapacity to grasp the cogency of the grounds on which
his theory reposed. And in a manner he was right.
The logical cohesion of the fabric of his thought was such,
that no one, who had once attributed to concepts a reality
superior to that of the phenomena they interpret, could
question it without succumbing ultimately to the very
difficulties brought against himself.

§ 10. If, therefore, we desire to account both for
Plato's self-criticism in the Parmenides, and the reiteration
of its arguments, almost in so many words, by Aristotle,
and yet to retain the belief that Plato's Ideal Theory was
one of the great landmarks in the history of thought, and
that its author never quite abandoned it, what shall we
do ? We shall have, certainly, to discard the notion of
diminishing our difficulties by doubling the Ideal Theories,
which have to be grasped, expounded, and defended
against substantially the same objections. By trying to
extract tzuo theories from Plato we only complicate the
situation with the problem of their relation and that of
Plato's psychological development ; and we sacrifice the
unity of Platonism.

Let us try rather to understand thoroughly the one
theory which indubitably is in Plato. It may then
appear that it leaves no real room for any other. We
may then perceive that it forms the soul of Plato's
thought, which is neither abandoned, nor altered, nor im-
proved in any points which can be treated as essential,
but persists substantially the same throughout. Not
that, of course, Plato may not have varied at different
times the emphasis and attention bestowed on its various
aspects ; but the truth is, that it could not be really
altered without renouncing what seemed to Plato the most
essential of truths, and that so, however clearly he had

50 STUDIES IN HUMANISM n

perceived its difficulties, he was equally unable to remedy
them or to remodel it. Plato was perfectly aware of his
difficulties, but unable to remove them ; because he
was aware also that they were directly connected with
what most he valued in his theory. But it is just in this
that his greatness appears ; his critics and successors,
from Aristotle downwards, have perceived his difficulties,
but not their own ; they do not perceive, that is, that
their own conception of knowledge is at bottom Plato's,
that the difficulties are common to them and him,
and that there is no escape from them except by a
complete abandonment of Plato's intellectualistic pre-
supposition, and a thorough correction of his funda-
mental error as to the functioning of concepts. So their
gibes recoil upon their own heads, and their imperfectly
thought-out theories of knowledge either stop short of
these ultimate difficulties, or, if they reach them, wreck
themselves on the same rock, and in the same helpless
and inevitable way as Plato's ; while they periodically
raise the cry of * back to Plato,' without perceiving that
Plato can teach them nothing if they are not willing
to take to heart the lesson of his failure. In short, the
grounds of Plato's embarrassments are also those of his
success ; but to prove this, it is necessary to hark back
much farther than Platonic criticism is wont to go,
namely, to the beginnings of the Ideal Theory, and to
examine its deepest roots.

§ II. Broadly considered, the Ideal Theory has two
main aspects, the one metaphysical or ontological, the
other logical. It is, on the one hand, Plato's account of
the true and ultimate reality, and on the other, his account
of the problem of thought, and his solution of ' the
predication puzzle,' as to how 5 can be P. Of these two
aspects we have already noted (§ 9) that the first has
been made more prominent by Plato's readers, rather
than by Plato himself. Men are more interested to
arrive at ultimate reality than careful to scrutinize the
logical soundness of the steps by which they hope to reach
it. Yet, from a scientific standpoint, it is probably the

11 FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 51

logical aspect of the Ideal Theory which is more worthy
of admiration ; and it will also prove to be more funda-
mental. For the metaphysical difficulties of Platonism,
which have attracted such widespread attention, are
really secondary ; they arise from deeper logical difficulties
which have been hardly noticed. Hence the impasse in
which the Ideal Theory ends; hence the perplexities about
its meaning, and that of the whole Platonic problem ;
hence, too, the predestined failure of attempts to repair
the metaphysic of Platonism without rectifying its logic.

Plato could not cure his metaphysical troubles
because he could not disavow their logical foundations.
He could not disavow these foundations because of his
conception of the Concept, to renounce which seemed to
him to revert to intellectual chaos ; and rather than
provoke this, he was content to recognize a final in-
explicability in his theory of reality. After all it might
seem better to retain an important and valuable truth,
while honestly avowing its shortcomings, than to reject
it wholly because it was not complete. Such an attitude
is natural and pardonable ; it only becomes indefensible,
if the theory which has to own to final failure originally
claimed a completeness which it cannot reach.

§ 1 2. Without, therefore, attempting to fathom the
vicissitudes of Plato's psychological development, which
were doubtless many though not necessarily recorded in
his writings, we may follow the logical order of his train
of thought, and see how it conducted him to his final crux.

It seemed evident to Plato that his philosophic prede-
cessors had left knowledge in an impossible position.
Neither the ' Flux ' of Heraclitus, nor the one ' Being ' of
the Eleatics, admitted of significant assertion. In the one
case predication was rendered meaningless ; how could it
be asserted that ' S ts P'? If neither S nor P remain
identical for two moments together, how can it be truer
to say that 5 is P than that 5 is not P} Nay, if both
are in a continual flux, if 5 is for ever passing into not-S,
and P into not-P, how can any assertion mean anything
at all ? The Eleatic alternative is no better. It so

52 STUDIES IN HUMANISM n

emphasizes the identity and unity of Being as to exclude
all difference ; it cannot be asserted that 5 is P, but only
that vS is S, and necessarily incapable of 'becoming' P.
But is not this to restrict truth to idle tautologies, and to
invalidate the very form of judgment ?

To Plato, as he meditated on this problem, salvation
seemed to lie in the Concept, which seemed to mediate
between and to reconcile the logical demands of the
antagonistic metaphysics. The philosophical discovery of
the Concept's function is, perhaps, to be credited to
Socrates, but it is not probable that he had used it as the
basis for a complete Weltanschauung. The Socratic Concept
was still used merely in its natural * pragmatic ' way,
as the ideal unity whereby the human mind classifies and
controls the confusing and confused multitude of par-
ticulars, and orders its experience. It was thus essentially
an instrument of human cognition ; but it may be
doubted whether Socrates had recognized its fundamental
importance for logic.

Plato was immensely struck with the Concept's
apparent character as a unity in plurality. Here was
a ' one ' which apparently controlled a ' many,' which
obediently meant nothing but the ' one ' they exemplified ;
a ' one ' which pervaded, instead of excluding a ' many,'
and stood related to them, and yet stood aloof, i.e. was
not affected by them nor merged in the flux of sense ; a
' one,' therefore, which could form the stable centre for a
fixed scheme of classification, whereby the fleeting flux of
indefinite and infinite perceptions could be measured and
apprehended. The Concept thus became the principle of
permanence and knowableness, opposed to change and
ignorance, as well as the principle of unity. In so far as
anything could be said really to be, and really to be
known, it was by predicating some concept of it. The
' is ' of predication was difTerent in kind from the
' becomes ' of sense-perception ; but it was the meaning of
the latter and the solution of its mystery.

The more he meditated on the nature of the Concept,
the clearer it seemed to Plato that it supplied the remedy

II FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 53

for the defects of both his predecessors. By it the
HeracHtean flux of sense was arrested, and provided with
a stable standard of reference, and thereby rendered
intelligible. By it was vindicated not only the indepen-
dence, but the reality of thought — nay, its superior
reality, as against the turbulent confusion of the senses.
By it, again, was rendered intelligible the rigid unity of
the Eleatic One, which now became flexible and adaptable
to the world ; for the ' Idea ' could be predicated of the
flux without losing its unity and identity.

Nay, more, what was true of each Idea in its relation
to its particulars was a fortiori true, of the Ideas in their
relation to each other. The World of Ideas formed a
system of interrelated concepts, the fixed relations of which
could be made to guarantee the truth of the predications
which reproduced this order. Thus the undifferentiated
unity of Eleaticism was expanded and articulated into a
well-knit system of perfectly knowable Ideas.

Plato, in short, had discovered the function of the
Concept in the organization of experience. He had
become aware of ' the ideal network,' by means of which
we fish out of the swirl of events what is of value
for our life. Nor had he discovered this by halves.
It seems impossible to suppose that he had first dis-
covered the existence of Ideas, and then realized the
need of connecting them into a system, and thereupon
improved his former theory. For no first-rate philosopher
could have discovered the one without at once inferring
the other. The systematic character of the Ideas is
implicit from the first in the assertion of the Idea as
the ' one ' in the ' many,' as the unity pervading the flow
of perceptions. Each concept, that is, is a scheme, or
rubric, or pigeon-hole, for the organization and control of
a stream of particulars. It is, in short, a system. It
is equally manifest that these systems are parts of larger
ones. Concepts are manifestly related to each other.
They congregate into sciences, and the study of these
easily points to the conception of an Ideal which will
completely unify our conceptual world.

54 STUDIES IX HUMANISM n

Accordingly, it is not in the least surprising that
the dialogue which is usually conceived as the cul-
minating point of the ' earlier ' theory of Ideas, the
wonderful Republic, should already contain in principle the
chief points elaborated in the ' later ' theory, or that in it
Plato should unequivocally recognize the systematic charac-
ter of the Ideas and the need for their unification by an
ultimate Ideal. The mutual participation in one another
of the Ideas (Koivcovia elBcov), which is introduced as a
familiar notion in 476 A, is just as essential and integral
a postulate of the Ideal Theory as the ' participation ' of
the Sensible in the Idea. For it would be of no use
to be able to predicate Ideas of sensible things, if Ideas
could not be predicated of one another. Such ' participa-
tion ' is also a necessary presupposition of the Ideal of the
' Idea of Good,' by which Plato puts the coping-stone on
his theory- of knowledge. This grand conception is so
simple, and has been so often misinterpreted, that we may
devote a section to the elucidation of its ' mystery.'

§ 13. The ' Idea of Good,' in its actual functioning, is
Plato's substitute for ' God,' the Prime Cause of all Good-
ness, Beauty, Knowableness, and True Being in the world.
But it is exalted to this supreme position by gradual
steps which it is possible to trace, and to which the clue
lies in an exact translation of the Greek. Its exact
meaning is ' the Concept of End.' So translating it we
see at once that it represents not only the ideal of unifica-
tion of knowledge, but also (what is quite as important)
the absorption into Platonism of Anaxagoras's conception
of Purposive Reason (Xof)?), as the cosmic principle of
order and discrimination, or, as we should say, selection.
It demands, that is, not only that knowledge shall be
unified and ordered, but that its order shall be teleological,
' rational ' and ' good.' A complete explanation of the
world must be in terms of ' ends,' and not of ' causes ' ; the
principle of cosmic order must be assimilated to the pro-
cedure of human reason and to human recognitions of
moral values. It is, in short, f/ie postulate of a complete
teleological explanation of the universe.

n FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 55

Now Plato was quite well aware that this was a pos-
tulate which in the existing state of the sciences it was
impossible to satisfy. When the time comes for ' Socrates '
in the Republic (^^^2 E) to expound to ' Glaucon ' the actual
nature of the process whereby the teleological deduction of
everything real and intelligible is to be demonstrated, he
simply declares that he cannot, because the latter has not
studied mathematics far enough. This obviously means
that Plato cannot tell us, because Science is not sufficiently
advanced. But Plato thought that the discovery of the
secret of the universe was not far off; hence the ardour
with which he subsequently devoted himself to the pursuit
of the sciences, which in his time were most advanced,
which seemed most plainly a priori and ' independent of
experience,' and appeared to illustrate most lucidly both
the ' participation ' of Ideas in one another and their fixed
ordering by a superior principle, viz. the mathematical.
Do we not see how, e.g. in arithmetic, the numbers stand
in fixed and intelligible relations to one another, and are
yet pervaded and systematized by the nature of the unit ?
What wonder, then, that when Plato essayed to expound
the nature of the Good and its relation to the universe,
his lectures should grow, as we are told, so clogged with
abstruse mathematics as to drive away the throngs which
had been attracted by their title ? What wonder, again,
that the Good should insensibly degenerate again into the
One, and that a bare, formal, intellectual unity should take
the place of the purposive harmony which the Ideal of the
Good had at first demanded ? For it was most unfor-
tunate to try to illustrate the content of the Supreme Pur-
pose from mathematics. These sciences, no doubt, are
ultimately purposive structures, and admirably illustrate
the systematic character of knowledge ; but superficially
their procedure is not teleological at all. To reduce the
Good, therefore, to a mere demand for a formal unity,
verbally implicit in the notion of a universe, was to stultify
the whole conception.

§ 14. Plato had discovered the function of the Concept,
and constructed the Ideal of perfect knowledge. But his

56 STUDIES IN HUMANISM n

Theory of Ideas overshot the mark in losing sight of the
Concept's instrumental character. Consequently he pro-
ceeded to misconceive (i) its relation to perception, and
(2) the real nature of the Concept itself.

(i) He had perceived that concepts colligated and
classified percepts, which are * known ' by such conceptual
classifications. He perceived also that this ' knowing,'
however completely it may satisfy our immediate interest,
never exhausts the potential significance of percepts.
However many ' Ideas ' are predicated of a percept, it
still admits of further predications (should any one need to
make them). What this really proves is the excellence
of an instrument which cannot be worn out by use.

But Plato took it as a defect. Not in the concept,
however^ but in the percept. It meant that the percept
was such as to elude the grasp of thought. It was too
impermanent, too various, too unstable, too indefinable, to
be fully known, to be really knowable. Whatever you
might say it was, it was always something else as well ;
it was always turning into an ' other.' The perceptual
was always changing, that is, always ' becoming ' ; and
* becoming ' set reason at defiance. It could only be
thought as an unintelligible union of ' not being ' with
' being.' Hence the perceptual world was stained with an
ineradicable taint ; it did not possess true being, nor the
permanence which that entailed. It was vitiated through
and through by a ' non-existent,' a yJr] 6v, which rendered it
impermanent, and imperfect, and individual, and in general
accounted for the flux of sense.

It followed that the Sensible was not strictly to be
known. Knowledge is only of universals, ' Ideas ' ; that
which eludes the universal, the infinite particularity of the
' this,' ' here,' and ' now,' is strictly unknowable. Science
takes no account of the differences between one man and
another ; ^ demonstration stops with the least general
' law' (which, however, is still a universal) ;^ there can be
no definition of the individual. True knowledge, there-

1 Theaetetus, 209. Cp. Essay, iii. § 18.
2 Cp. Hep. 511 B. , and Essay, vi. §§ 3, 4.

n FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 57

fore, is wholly conceptual, and essentially independent of
' sense,' even though for unreal beings, wallowing in the
obscurities of the phenomenal, it may have to be
perceived, and extracted from a ' this-here-now.'

An easy fusion, further, of the ethical with the epis-
temological meaning of ' living by the senses,' here forms
a natural starting-point for a moral development of the
Ideas as Ideals, which made the Platonic disparagement
of the world of sense a basis for asceticism and a
jumping-off place to a ' heaven ' of pure thought, which
assuredly no individual souls could have attained.^

§ 15. The question which naturally arises at this
point is why any one should look any further for the
source of the Platonic ^a)ptcryu.o9, the ' transcendence ' or
' hypostasization ' of the Platonic Ideas. The metaphysical
dualism of the Ideal Theory is plainly implicit in its
epistemological dualism. The dualistic chasm between
the Real and the Phenomenal is merely the translation
into ontological language, the application to the meta-
physical problem, of the dualistic antithesis between
' thought ' and ' sensation,' ' knowledge ' and ' opinion,'
merely a consequence of a formulation of an ideal of
knowledge which had abstracted from personality and
ignored individuality, and so had constitutionally incapa-
citated itself from understanding actual knowing.

The Platonic Idea has emancipated itself from man ;
it has become so ' independent ' as to have lost all intrinsic
connexion with human knowing ; it has soared to so
' supercelestial ' an Empyrean that human effort and
human aspiration can no longer follow it. Consequently
when it revisits the terrestrial scene, it ' descends into the
Cave,' and demeans itself by consorting with man, whose
whole life, with its interests, individuality, and imper-
manence, it must heartily despise. For the * Ideal '
Theory of knowledge has no intrinsic connexion with
human life ; man for it is an encumbrance to be over-

' Whether, however, Plato himself perceived the incompatibility of individual
immortality with his theory of knowledge is doubtful. His arguments, as Teich-
miiller has shown, never ' prove ' more than the immortality of soul as a prin-
ciple ; but he may have taken the plurality of souls for granted empirically.

58 STUDIES IN HUMANISM n

come, and not a master to be served. The connexion
which appears to exist between the two is intrinsically-
unintelligible, because they are not really related ; it is
impossible to explain how man can rise to the contem-
plation of eternal truth, or why the Idea should descend
to distort itself in human thoughts. And what is the
relation of the Ideal archetype to its human ' copies ' is
the greatest unintelligibility of all. To shirk this ques-
tion by merely remarking that all the copies are imper-
fect is plainly insufficient. For this does not explain the
various sorts and degrees of inadequacy with which human
ideas are afflicted, nor account for their occurrence in the
place and at the time they occur. And since ex hypothesi
the ideal Idea is never realized on earth, it cannot be
appealed to to discriminate between a ' true ' idea and a
' false,' between one man's idea, and one man's ideal, and
another man's : the whole notion of the eternal Idea is,
in short, devoid of application.

§ 1 6. If, however, undismayed by this logical collapse,
we proceed to translate the theory into metaphysics, we
inevitably reach the results on which the charge of
dualism is commonly based.

The Ideas are the true Reality which exists eternally
in absolute self-sufficing independence {avTo Kad' avro
ael 6v) : sensible things, which ' somehow ' are debased
unintelligible ' copies ' of them, are not truly real. Human
ideas (' opinions ') are in general at a still lower level of
imitation (et/cacrto.) ; yet the philosopher can ' somehow '
rise to a vision of the true Ideas, and, when he does so,
he grasps reality, and his ideas are rendered true because
they predicate the eternal relations of the absolute Ideas.

This is all the metaphysical version of the Ideal
Theory comes to, the substance of Platonic metaphysics.
Only Plato, being a poet, translates the ' somehow ' into
brilliantly pictorial imagery and the most gorgeous
' myths.' His modern imitators, who are not poets, can
eke out this jejune ' somehow ' only by pseudo-religious
homilies on the necessary limitations of human knowledge,
and the presumption of trying to understand wholly what

n FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 59

is avowedly a theory of absolute truth ; but it is a moot
point whether they perceive the grotesque contradiction
between the claims and the achievements of their theory/

There is no reason to suppose, however, that Plato
himself was, even transiently, deceived. Even without the
Parmenides, the variegated metaphors with which he else-
where describes the relation which is null, the connexion
which is impossible, between the Ideal and the Sensible,
the Real and the inexplicable unreality of the Apparent,
between Absolute Truth and absolutely incomprehensible
Error, should convince us that his language was intended
to be pictorial. It does not really matter whether the
Sensible is said to ' participate ' in the Real, or to ' imitate '
it, or to ' copy ' it as an archetypal model. It does not
really matter whether ' the world of Ideas ' is situated in
* a heavenly place ' or in ' supercelestial space,' whether
human knowledge is derived from ' recollections ' of pre-
natal visions, or elicited from potentialities of eternal
truth inherent in the mind, whether human souls are one
or many, incarnated or reincarnated, composed of mortal
or immortal ' parts,' or both ; in every case the real diffi-
culty is one and the same. The descent from the Ideal
is an unmediated, incomprehensible Fall, a submergence
of the Real in a Flux of Illusion. So long as this Fall
is unexplained, Plato has rescued knowledge from the
Flux only by getting it into a fix.

It is quite superfluous, therefore, to indict Plato's meta-
physic for its failure ' to derive the Sensible,' to connect
the Real with the Transcendent, to bridge the chasm

^ Prof. J. S. Mackenzie in Mind, N.S. xv. No. 59, must surely be ironical. For
after advocating what he calls his ' old idealism ' (which, as attenuated in his
statement, becomes indiscernible from realistic monism) on the ground that " the
theory seems to make the universe intelligible to us, and we cannot think of any
alternative theory that does " (p. 323), and alleging that this is " the only ultimate
kind of proof that can be given," he goes on to say that " it would be absurd
to expect any system of Idealism to show the rationality of the universe in such a
sense as this," i.e. by a teleological explanation of particular events and physical
processes, such as Plato hitnself demanded in the Phaedo ! And finally it turns
out that even so ' Idealism ' cannot fulfil the duty to which it has restricted itself,
and he will " by no means affirm that it can, in this present life, become com-
pletely intelligible to us" (p. 328). Truly, an amazing confession from a theory
which demanded acceptance on the ground of its unique ability to render the
world completely intelligible ! Cp. also Mr. Bradley in Mind, No. 74, and my
comments in No, 76.

6o STUDIES IN HUMANISM ii

between the Ideal and the Human. Habemus confitentem
reum ; Plato himself has admitted and deplored the fact,
far more completely and compactly, and in far finer
language than any of his critics and successors.^ Plato
has anticipated all their difficulties, objections, and sugges-
tions for a cure — the problem of the ' transcendence ' or
' independence ' of the Idea — Aristotle's ' third man,' i.e.
the infinite series of impotent mediators between the Idea
and the sensible thing — the problem of the unity of an
Idea which is exemplified in and distributed among in-
finite particulars — the objection to recognizing eternal
Ideas of everything that can be named or invented — the
nullity of a thought which neither is nor can be thought
by any one — the vain device of an absolute thinker to
retain in thought the Ideas not in human use ^ — the fatal
divorce between human and Ideal truth — the unknowable-
ness of the latter and its unconcern about the former — the
incapacity of the Divine, just because it is divine, to know
the human — all these were familiar to Plato as conse-
quences of his theory.

But it is fallacious to argue that, because he recognized
these difficulties, he was able or willing to remove them.
He appears to have regarded them as the price which
had to be paid for the Ideal Theory. And he never
refuses to pay the price. All that in the Parmenides
(135 C) he has to set against the objections he has
enumerated is, that if the Ideas are abandoned, knowledge
is impossible ; and this remark is significantly put into the
mouth of ' Parmenides,' who has just made havoc of the
* Socratic ' theory. If the price seems to us stupendous,
and the gain incommensurate, we should at least reflect
that the cost of an (approximately) consistent intellectu-
alism has not been reduced since Plato's day, and that, even
with all its difficulties, Plato might well remain convinced
of the fundamental value of his theory.

For after all was not all knowledge, in the true
sense, still manifestly conceptual ? Were not Ideas, and

1 Cp. especially Parmenides, 131-4.
"^ For this would seem to be implied in the ' thinking Ideas ' of Farm. 132 C.

n FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 6i

nothing but Ideas, used in all predication ? Was not
that which is not ' Idea ' incapable of being thought, or
expressed, or understood ? Nay, in the end, what but
an Idea could be predicated as existent, i.e. could be
at all ? All this was true and important, and less
specious theories have often been upheld on feebler
grounds.

What, then, of the charge that Plato has wantonly and
vainly duplicated the real world by his Ideal world ? It
is simply not true that he has asserted the existence of
two real worlds, of which one is superfluous. He has
asserted only one real world, viz. the Ideal world, just as
he has asserted only one form of true ' knowledge,'
viz. that of concepts. He has had to admit, indeed, that
besides the real world there appears to exist also a world of
sense, which is a world of illusion, and can be perceived,
but is not to be rendered fully intelligible even by the Ideas
which pervade it. But his metaphysic is no more really
dualistic than that of the Eleatics. Parmenides also had
described a ' way of opinion ' to deal with the sensible world
which ' somehow ' coexisted with the Absolute One. Plato's
account is essentially the same, with two improvements. He
has articulated the One into a system of Ideas ; and he
has suggested that though the illusion is incomprehen-
sible, we can yet in a way comprehend why it should,
and that it must, be so. For we can understand that if
reasoning as such inevitably predicates Ideas, a rational
deduction of what is not Idea is inconceivable. Thus the
very existence of the non-existent is to be grasped only
by ' a spurious reasoning.'

And yet it was most natural that the Platonic doctrine
should be, at once and persistently, misunderstood. The
truth of Plato's theory is evident only to those who can
see with Plato's eye and from Plato's point of view. His
doctrine must appear as an assertion of two real worlds
once we presume the initial reality of our phenomenal
world of sense. To view it in this way at once renders the
Ideal world a second world, which claims superior reality,
but is ludicrously unable to make good its claim, because

62 STUDIES IN HUMANISM n

it fails to establish any real connexion with the primary-
reality of the world it essays to control.

But this interpretation is false to Plato's thought.
Plato had never admitted the primary reality of our
phenomenal world. On the contrary, he had denounced
it as tainted with unreality. For Plato, therefore,
Platonism is a one-world view ; its dualism lies not in
metaphysics, but in epistemology.

For Aristotle, his unknown predecessors (answered in
the Parmenides), and his successors, it is no doubt a two-
world view, split by a metaphysical chasm between the two
worlds.

It all depends, therefore, on the standpoint. The
true Platonic standpoint assumes the reality of the Ideal,
and starts with it, but is unable to get down to the
human world. The Aristotelian standpoint, which is
that of common-sense, assumes the reality of the human
world, starts with that, comes to the brink of the same
chasm from the opposite side, and is, of course, unable to
leap across it to the Ideal. There is not really any differ-
ence of opinion about the actual facts of the situation :
both sides come to the same gap, and are stopped by it.

The sole question is as to which is our proper stand-
point. Now this question might be argued with endless
subtlety ; for on the one hand absolute truth would seem
to be visible only from the Ideal standpoint ; on the other
human truth would seem to be that proper to man.
What, however, cuts the discussion short is the simple
fact that before a man can maintain the Ideal standpoint
it must be reached from the human by a man. And if man
can attain it, he ought to be able to leave it again. If,
therefore, it appears that there is no road back to the
human from the Ideal, it clearly cannot have been reached
by valid means. So what Plato has forgotten is the
deduction of his standpoint. He must have jumped to
his Ideal standpoint. Once he got to it, all went
swimmingly, until the time came for a return to earth ;
then he found he could not return, but without under-
standing why. Accordingly all he can say is that the Ideal

II FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 63

world is certainly real, that the world of sense is not, and
that if the Ideas are denied, thinking must stop, because
all predication uses concepts. Now all these things,
which are in a manner true, he says unweariedly from
first to last. That his attitude has seemed perplexing
and obscure is wholly due to his critics' lack of per-
ception. They have not penetrated into the depths of
Plato's problem, nor seen that the real difficulty springs
from his conception of knowledge.

And so they have actually thought themselves entitled
to scorn Plato's metaphysic while submissively accepting
his notion of the Concept ! But this is no way of breaking
Plato's spell ; and the resulting failures to solve his problem,
nay, to avoid repeating his confessions of embarrassment,
in almost the same words, are distinctly humorous.
Aristotle's devices, for example, for avoiding the tran-
scendence of the Idea seem deliciously naive. He
declares that, of course, ' universals ' must be conceived
as immanent in their ' particulars ' ; but how this can be,
he is quite unable to explain. He protests (rightly
enough) that individual substances are primary reality,
and that universals are only ' second substances ' ; but for
lack of insight into the instrumental function of the latter,
his theory of knowledge ends in the unresolved contradic-
tion that, since knowledge is essentially of universals, the
metaphysical order is epistemologically impossible, and
individuals, which in metaphysics are ultimate reality, in
epistemology are as such unknowable ! It thereupon
seems only a secondary mishap that after all his denuncia-
tions of Platonic ;^co/3to-yLto9 he should have to make his own
vov<; something '^copcaTov, or to postulate the transcend-
ence of his deity, who is really quite as much dissevered
from the universe as the Platonic Idea, and can act on
it only by the magic of the world's desire for his perfect
' form.'

As for Plato's followers, whose name is legion, their
labour has been that of Danaids. They have been trying
to carry the waters of truth in Plato's conceptual sieve,
without so much as perceiving that the vessel leaked.

64 STUDIES IN HUMANISM u

And this, at least, Plato may claim to have perceived,
even though he was at a loss for means to stop the
leakages of truth through the holes in his conception of
the Concept.

§ 17. For the only real escape from his embarrass-
ments lay in a direction in which he could not and would
not look for it, viz. in a radical recognition of the func-
tional and instrumental nature of the Concept. But this
would have involved a rehabilitation of the senses and
of immediate experience, and a complete remodelling of
Plato's conceptions of Truth and Reality. Even if by
some strange chance he had caught a glimpse of this
way out, he would have averted his eyes from the im-
pious spectacle. The view that concepts are not unalter-
able and only relatively constant (like mere material
things), being essentially tools slowly fashioned by a
practical intelligence for the mastery of its experience,
whose value and truth reside in their application to the
particular cases of their use, and not in their timeless
validity nor in their suprasensible otiuni cmn dignitate in
a transcendent realm of abstractions, would have seemed
to him as paradoxical and monstrous and unsatisfying
as it still does to his belated followers. Yet it is this
notion of Truth, this insight into the function of Ideas,
which the working of Science has slowly brought to light,
after many centuries of incessant and by no means always
successful warfare against the glamour of the gorgeous
castles which Platonism has erected in and out of the air.

There had been a couple of huge mistakes in Plato's
conception of the Concept's function: (i) The initial
abstraction from its human side was really illegitimate ;
and so (2) no provision had been made for the growth
of truth.

(i) Because in ordinary cases our reasoning can often
abstract from the personal peculiarities of this man or
that, it does not follow that we can abstract from all
men, and dehumanize truth as a whole. Because we
make truth what may be, roughly, called * independent,'
it does not follow that it can be absolutely so, or that it

II FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 65

is logically irrelevant that we make it so for certain purposes
of our own. In point of fact, the whole depersonalizing
or dehumanizing of truth (and of reality) must be con-
ceived, and limited, pragmatically. It is a procedure
which is useful, and works for certain limited purposes ;
but it breaks down woefully and irretrievably when it is
conceived as ultimate. ' Pure Reason,' defecated of all
human interests, can assert its rationality as little as its
existence.

(2) One of the chief characteristics of human truth is
its progressiveness. It is essentially a thing that must
grow and develop through stages subsequently known as
* errors.' Ideal truth, on the other hand, is conceived as
inerrant, and as fixed and immutable in its perfection.
When, therefore, Platonism abstracted from the human
side of knowing, it implicitly rejected also the conception
of a growth of knowledge. To render such grov/th con-
ceivable, concepts must not be conceived as rigid, but as
improvable and adjustable to new conditions. It is
here that a priori dogmatism fails. Its fallacy does not
lie in its deductive procedure, but in its tacit as-
sumption that the concepiio?is it argues from are final
and not to be revised. But for this assumption, a
' contradiction ' might only prove that the conceptions
used were insufficient for their work. And if there is
always this alternative inference from an apparent case
of contradictory conceptions, how can the intellectualist
belief in a purely formal criterion of truth, which regards
it as mere self-consistency, be sustained, or the pragmatic
appeal to consequences be averted ?

The Platonic Ideas illustrate this situation admirably.
Plato had perceived that stable concepts were needed for
significant assertion and profitable inquiry. But (as in
the similar cases of the ' independence ' of ' reality,' and of
' truth ') this stability was not conceived pragmatically, i.e.
as the amount and sort of stability which concepts need
to fulfil their actual function. It was cut loose from
human knowing, and taken as absolute. Concepts there-
by became immutable. But if our concepts are immutable.

66 STUDIES IN HUMANISM n

our knowledge cannot grow. Conversely, if our know-
ledge grows, our concepts cannot be immutable. If,
therefore, there are immutable concepts, they cannot, at
any rate, be ours. They are different in kind, and so
cannot explain human knowledge. The inability, in
short, of the Platonic Idea to descend to earth is inherent
in its construction.

If, without realizing this fundamental divorce between
the Ideal and the human, into which Platonism has been
beguiled, we try to adjust the Platonic Idea to the growth
of knowledge, we at once evolve a tissue of absurdities.

(i) If the Ideal World is to remain connected with
ours, and to be affected by our judgments, it would
follow that any change in our world would have to be
reflected in the Ideal. Every time any one hit upon a
new predication which could sustain its claim to truth,
every time a new reality, say a motor car, was made or
generated, or an old one, say a dodo, became extinct,
there would have to ensue a responsive readjustment in
the eternal system of Ideas. But would not this destroy
its eternity, and effectively include it in the sphere of the
Sensible ? How could Ideas, thus subject to Becoming,
thus perfected in time, any longer function as representa-
tive of timeless * Being ' ?

(2) But even if a Becoming of the Ideas were admitted,
it would not explain the Becoming of the Sensible. The
Ideal Bed may be, as we are told in the Republic (596),
the eternal reality, of which all real beds are imperfect
copies ; but how does it assist or explain the genesis of
the latter? Humanly speaking, beds were invented by
men, in response to human needs, by the practical
exercise of their intelligence for the manipulation of
reality, at a definite stage in the history of man's pro-
gress. But what had eternal Ideas to do with any part
of this history ? How can the eternal nature of the
Ideal Bed account for the time, or the place, or the
material, or the inventor of the first construction of beds,
or for their subsequent improvements, and the consequent
expansion in our notions of what an ideal bed requires ?

11 FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS ^7

Shall we assert that the Ideal Bed, e.g. had spiral springs
all along, because the best beds now possess them, or
deny this, because in Plato's time such modern im-
provements had not been thought of?

(3) If, on the other hand, we rigidly maintain the
transcendence of the Ideal, we must lose connexion with
human knowing. The latter becomes a self- directing
process which Pure Reason cannot sanction or understand,
while Ideal Truth becomes the meaningless monopoly of
Gods who, as Plato said, cannot know the human.^ How
clearly Plato himself had seen this objection is attested
also by a remarkable passage in the Sophist (247-9),
which points out that knowledge of the Ideas implies
an interaction between them and us, and so their
alteration, and thereby a sacrifice of their independence,
absoluteness, and immutability. In return, they are
promised motion, life, soul, intelligence, and purposive
reason : but what of their stability ? Plato can see a
way to reconcile these conflicting postulations as little
as in the Parmenides ; he leaves the contradiction un-
resolved.

It is easy, of course, to say that he ought on no
account to have put up with it. He ought to have
adopted the more tolerable alternative ; he ought to have
upheld at all costs the relevance of the Ideas to
human knowing ; he ought to have taken account of
the growth of knowledge ; he ought to have sacrificed
the eternity and immutability of truth.

It is easy for us to say this, because we can realize
that the concepts we use are continuously changing as
our knowledge grows, though more slowly than our
percepts, and that immutability is neither a fact nor a
necessity. We can see, indeed, that so far from postulating
immutability, our concepts could not perform their
functions if they did not change. We are thus com-
pelled to conceive any ' absolute ' truth which is relevant
to actual knowing as nothing more than, as it were,
humanly absolute, i.e. as an ideal for us, which we are

^ Parmenides, 134 E.

68 STUDIES IN HUMANISM n

really making and realizing, and which must, for that very
reason, not be eternally accomplished.

But Plato could not see this.^ He could not see his
way to changing his notion of the Concept without
demolishing knowledge. He could see no way of com-
bining the purity of knowledge per se with its attainment
by us. He could not see that the constancy of a concept
predicated, need be no greater than suffices to express
the purpose and convey the meaning of a judgment.
He could not see this, because the purpose was just part
of that Protagorean humanism, which he had interpreted
and repudiated as scepticism.

But though he did not see this, he saw far more
than his successors. The whole intellectualist theory of
knowledge is a washed-out replica of Platonism, inferior
in design, execution, vividness of colouring, and above all
in significance. For the clearness with which Plato had
pointed to the flaw of his theory ought to have suggested
the need for a thorough re-examination of the function of
the Concept. In point of fact it did nothing of the kind.
The later intellectualists hardly realized how completely
they were dependent on Plato for the foundations on
which they built ; they hardly ever penetrated to the
fundamental difficulties of their common theory.

§ 1 8. To us at last the way is clear. We must
conceive the Concept as an instrument of human know-
ledge, and its nature as relative to, and revealed in, its
use, and therefore to be discovered by attentive study
of actual knowing, and not by meditation and dialectical

^ Prof. J. A. Stewart has, however, propounded (in Plato's Doctrine of
Ideas) a brilliant and original theory that the so-called ' Socratic ' dialogues,
so far from being scientifically negligible, are really essential to the complete
statement of the Ideal Theory, and should be taken as exemplifying the function
of the Concept in use, and as supplementing the account of the abstract concept
given in the dogmatic dialogues, on which alone the traditional descriptions of
Platonism have been based. If this attractive theory can be substantiated in
detail, the current estimates of Plato will have to be profoundly modified, and we
also can no longer treat him as a complete intellectualist. He could be charged
only with a failure to make clear the logical connexion between his two types of
dialogue, and to emphasize the vital importance of the functional view of the
Concept. Even on the most favourable interpretation, however, we can hardly
ascribe to him a full perception of the fact that the whole meaning of concepts
depends on their use and application.

II FROM PLATO TO PROTAGORAS 69

' criticism ' of abstracted and unmeaning ' forms of
thought.' Let us go back to Plato, by all means ;
but let us go back, not with the intention of repeating
his mistake and painfully plunging into the ' chasm '
he has made, but in order to correct his initial error.
But to do this we must return from Plato to Protagoras.
We must abandon the attempt to dehumanize know-
ledge, to attribute to it an ' indepi^endence ' of human
purposes, an ' absoluteness ' which divorces it from life,
an ' eternity ' which is unrelated to time.

Or rather, if we wish to retain these hallowed terms,
we must construe them pragmatically. 'Independence'
must not be construed as a denial of connexion with
human life, but as a description of the selective valuation
which discriminates some more precious contents in human
experience from others of inferior value. ' Absoluteness '
must designate the ideal of complete adequacy for every
human purpose, while the ' eternity ' of truth must mean
its applicability at whatever time we will.

But to follow up the promise of these novel courses,
we must start once more, with Protagoras, from the
personal judgments of individuals, and study their develop-
ments, the ways in which they originate under the
promptings of complex psychic forces, the ways in which
they are combined into systems, and are verified, and
claim and secure ' objective ' validity, and engender the
final ideal of an independence and absoluteness which
are so easily misinterpreted into a nullification of the
processes that generated them. We must radically
disabuse our minds of the notion that Humanism means
Subjectivism, or Subjectivism Scepticism.

That Subjectivism need not coincide with Scepticism
is apparent from the fact that even the extremest
Solipsism need not doubt its own sufficiency. In point
of fact, it is Intellectualism which passes into Scepticism :
it engenders Scepticism so soon as the breakdown of its
impossible demands becomes evident to those who cannot
bear to part with it.

As for Subjectivism, no Protagorean would admit the

70 STUDIES IN HUMANISM ii

charge. He would not admit that in starting with the
individual he had also committed himself to finish up with
him. In knowing, also, the beginning and the end of
man's career lie far asunder. And he sees, of course,
that of the individual judgments made only a small
percentage are ever recognized as valid. But he observes
also that every one has a strong interest to get his
claims validated. Truth is one of the very few objects
of human desire of which no one desires the exclusive
rights.^ For if it could win no recognition, it would so
far not work, and so fail to be ' true.' It is easy to see,
therefore, that beings who live socially must speedily
accumulate large bodies of what they take to be ' objective '
truth, and that such truth must, on the whole, involve
and facilitate salutary adjustments of action. In point
of fact, the great social problem is not how to control
the individual and to secure conformity with existing
valuations, but how to secure and promote the individual
variations which initiate improvements.

The two supreme maxims of Hellenic wisdom, Knoiv
thyself, and Man is the Measure, therefore, are not in
conflict with each other, nor with the facts of life, and
their prosperous manipulation. They yield, at any rate,
a better guidance and a saner inspiration for man than
the unattainable phantom of an Ideal which exists
eternally, immutably, and absolutely for itself.

^ Cp. Humanism, p. 58.

Ill

THE RELATIONS OF LOGIC AND
PSYCHOLOGY^

ARGUMENT

§ I. Humanism as logical * psychologism.' § 2. It is beneficial to a Logic
which has lapsed into scepticism, because it has abstracted from actual
knowing. § 3. Definition of Psychology as a descriptive science of
concrete mental process. It can recognize cognitive values and claims,
though § 4 Logic must evaluate them, and thus arises out of Psychology.
Impossibility of forbidding it to describe cognitive processes. § 5.
Definition of Logic, a normative science arising out of the existence
oi false claims. § 6. Interdependence of the two sciences. The risks
of abstracting from any psychical fact. § 7. (i) Thinking depends
essentially on psychological processes, such as interest, purpose, emotion,
and satisfaction. § 8. (2) The fundamental 'logical' conceptions,
'necessity,' 'certainty,' 'self-evidence,' 'truth' are primarily psychical
facts. ' Logical ' certainty due to the extension of potential beyond
actual purpose in thinking. § 9. (3) The fundamental 'logical' opera-
tions have psychological aspects. E.g. the postulate of '■identity.^
Meaning dependent on context and purpose. The actual meaning vs.
the meaning per se. The problem of understanding. The ' logical '
abstractions as to meaning dangerous and false. Judg7iient an inti-
mately personal affair, which cannot be depersonalized, and is naturally

' The necessity of treating this subject from a Humanist point of view is
evident. It was borne in upon me with peculiar force by two circumstances.
The first was that the excellent articles on ' Pragmatism versus Absolutism,' by
Prof. R. F. A. Hoernle in Mind (xiv. N.S. Nos. 55 and 56), seemed to imply
a serious misapprehension of the conception of Psychology which we are bound
to entertain. Such misapprehension, however, is so natural, so long as no
formal treatment of the interrelations of Logic and Psychology is in print, that
it seemed imperative to attempt its removal.

Secondly, being called upon to start a discussion before the Aristotelian
Society, in which Professor Bosanquet and Dr. Hastings Rashdall also partici-
pated, I selected the question whether Logic can abstract from the psychological
conditions of thinking. The discussion which ensued will be found in the
Society's Proceedings for 1905-6, and though it was rather at cross purposes,
and on the whole illustrates only the difficulty philosophers have in understand-
ing one another, it enabled me to realize what a radical difference exists
between the Humanist and the intellectualist conceptions of these sciences. It
seemed helpful, therefore, to discuss these conceptions, and so this essay is
based in part on the ' symposium ' of the Aristotelian Society.

72 STUDIES IN HUMANISM m

related to questions and postulates. § lO. Can even desire be
abstracted from? A case of postulatory reasoning examined. § li.
As meaning always depends on context, and context on personality, is
Logic entitled to abstract from the knower's personality? § 12. The
anti-psychological standpoint of intellectualist logic. Its assumptions,
(l) 'Pure,' and (2) 'independent' thought. (3) 'Depersonaliza-
tion.' (4) The separation of thinking from 'willing' and 'feeling.'
§ 13. Is its standpoint descriptive or normative? or both and either?
§ 14. Incompetence of Logic for psychological description : its
unjust encroachment on psychology and result, § 15, the stultifica-
tion of psychology and the suicide of logic, teste Prof. Bosanquet.
§ 16. The great abstraction which ruins logic. § 17. 'Depersonaliza-
tion ' involves abstraction from error, which must yet be acknowledged
to exist. Mr. Joachim's confessions. Hence § 18 the complete break-
down of intellectualist logic, owing to a separation of the ideal and the
human which renders both meaningless. This is Plato's old error,
in the Theaetetus. § 19. The remedy is to refrain from de}mma7iizi7ig
knowledge, by (i) ethei-ealizing it, i.e. abstracting from its applicatiojt,
and (2) depersonalizing \\., i.e. abstracting from the knower's purpose.

§ I. It will, probably, be conceded by all philosophers
that the sciences are all (in some sense) connected with one
another, and that the precise way in which their connexion
is conceived will depend on the way we conceive the
sciences themselves. Nor will it be disputed that
since the definitions of a growing science must to some
extent change with the growth of our knowledge of the
data of that science, the relations of such sciences to each
other cannot be immutable. Consequently it may be
inferr'^d with some confidence that the Humanist move-
ment must have introduced some modifications and novel-
ties into our conceptions of Logic and of Psychology, and
of their relations to each other. This has, indeed, been
pretty widely recognized. In Germany, for example,
the analogous tendencies are commonly described,
as ' Psychologism,' and if * Psychologism ' means a
demand that the psychical facts of our cognitive func-
tioning shall no longer be treated as irrelevant to Logic,
it is clear, both that Humanism is Psychologism, and that
the demand itself is thoroughly legitimate, and not to be
dismissed with a mere non possuvms. For when Humanism
demands that philosophy shall start from, and satisfy, the
whole man in his full concreteness, and not exclusively
concern itself with a sort of elegant extract, a highly
perfumed and sophisticated * essence ' of man, dubbed ' the

Ill LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 73

rational intelligence,' there is certainly included in its
demand a much greater respect for the actual procedures
of human cognition and a much less easy-going acceptance
of petrified conventions than the traditional Logic will
find at all convenient.

§ 2. Yet a sincere attempt to comply with the
demands made upon it, whether in the name of Psycho-
logy or of Humanity, would do Logic no harm. Nay, it
might even prove its salvation. For its present condition
is anything but prosperous. It has lapsed into an
impotent scepticism, which is irremediable so long as it
cannot, or will not, emancipate itself from intellectualistic
presuppositions which render actual knowing inherently
' irrational.' So it has been forced practically to abandon
the attempt to account for knowing. It has been driven
to represent the processes by which de facto knowledge
is increased as logically invalid. Predication has become
for it a puzzle, inference a paradox, proof an impossibility,^
discovery a wonder, change a contradiction, temporal
succession incompatible with Science (which all the while
is busily engaged with predicting the future !), indivi-
duality an irrelevance, experience an impertinence, sensa-
tion a piece of unmeaning nonsense, thinking ' extra-
logical/ and so forth and so on. After delivering itself
of these valuable * criticisms ' of our ordinary cognitive
procedures, it has retired into an ' ideal ' world of its own
invention, out of space, out of time, out of sight (and
almost out of mind !), where it employs its ample leisure
with studying ' types ' that never lived on land or sea,
and constructing a Jiortus siccus of ' forms,' and compiling
unworkable * systems,' and concocting unrealizable * ideals,'
of ' Thought,' all of which have about as much relation to
actual knowing and to human truth as the man in the
moon ! But even in its suprasensible asylum the Erinyes
of the Reality it has abandoned and betrayed pursue it ;
it cannot manipulate to its satisfaction even the figments
and phantoms of the imaginary world which haunt it.

^ See Prof. Case's article on ' Logic' in the Encyclopedia Britannica (loth ed.
XX. 338) for a lucid exposition of this situation, with some excellent comments.

74 STUDIES IN HUMANISM m

Its * forms ' do not afford it aesthetic satisfaction ; its
' types ' are broken before ever they are used ; its ' systems '
will not hold together ; its ' ideals ' decline to be harmoni-
ous. In vain does it cry out to metaphysics to save it
from imminent collapse into the abyss of scepticism ;
its cognate metaphysics have abundant troubles of their
own, and are even more hopelessly involved in morasses
that border the brink of the pit ; they find, moreover, all
the sciences beset by similar distresses, and can vouchsafe
no answer save that the Real, at all events, does not
appear, nor can what appears be real.

In such a desperate plight it is surely not unbecoming
to approach the logician with the suggestion that his
troubles may be largely of his^own making, that possibly
his conception of Logic is at fault and capable of amend-
ment, and gently to point out to him that after all what he
originally undertook to do, but has now apparently quite
forgotten, was to provide a reasoned theory of actual
knowing, that the existence of such actual knowing is an
empirical fact which is not abolished by his failure to
understand it, that this fact constitutes his datum and his
raison d'etre, that he may as well accept it as the touch-
stone of his theories, and that it is the ' ideals of thought '
whi-^h must be accounted wrong if they cannot be rendered
compatible with the facts which formed their basis. He
may at least be called upon to consider the possibility
that, if he consents to start from actual knowing, and
refrains from welcoming ' ideals ' until they have been
authenticated by their connexion with the facts and
verified by their working when applied, he may reach
an altogether more profitable and effective conception of
Logic than that which is falling to pieces.

§ 3. Let us make bold, then, to re-define our sciences
and to re-conceive their relations.

And first of all let us consider the wider and lower of
these sciences, to wit Psychology. Without concerning
ourselves with the questions as to how far Psychology is, or
may be, experimental or explanatory, and even as to how far
its descriptions should be ' functional ' rather than ' struc-

m LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 75

tural,' as not affecting our present purpose, we may most
conveniently conceive it at present as a descriptive science,
whose aim is the description of mental process as such.
It is implied in this, and hardly in need of explicit state-
ment, that the mental processes of individual minds are
intended. For we cannot experience or observe mental
processes in any other way. Still it is worth noting
that, in this implication, Psychology gives us a certain
guarantee that it will do justice to the concreteness of
the actual human soul ; so far, at least, as the necessary
abstraction of its standpoint consequent on the limitation
of its purpose permits it to do.

The definition we have adopted clearly assigns to
Psychology a very extensive field of operations — prac-
tically the whole realm of direct experience. It recognizes
a psychological side also to everything that can be known,
inasmuch as everything known to exist must be connected
with our experience, and known by a psychical process.
In so far as any real is known, a process of experiencing
is involved in it, and this process appertains to the science
of Psychology. Thus all physical objects and questions
become psychological, so soon as we ask how they can be
experienced, and whether the psychical process of experi-
encing them warrants our claiming for them an ' objective
reality.' In some cases, as e.g. with regard to the exist-
ence of sea-serpents, N-rays, and ghosts, the question
about the ' reality ' of these objects is really one as to
whether the psychological treatment does not exhaust
their significance, or whether the psychical processes are
such as to justify our interpreting them as indicative of
* objective reality.'

Now among mental processes those which may be
called ' cognitive ' are very common and predominant, and
therefore the description of cognitive process will properly
fall into the province of Psychology. It stands to reason,
moreover, that it must be described as it occurs, and
without arbitrary attempts at reserving some of its aspects
for the exclusive consideration of another science. Now,
as cognitive process is naturally productive of * knowledge,'

ye STUDIES IN HUMANISM m

and valuable as such, it follows that cognitive values are
properly subject to psychological description. Mental
Life is, naturally and in point of fact, packed with values
ethical, sesthetical, and cognitive (' logical '), of which it is
the vehicle.^ It is the plain duty, therefore, of Psychology
to record this fact, and to describe these values. Cogni-
tive values, as psychical occurrences, are facts for Psycho-
logy. It is their specific character which subsequently
renders them subjects for Logic. Their specific character
is that they are claims to truth, and employ the predicates
'true' and 'false'; precisely as ^.^. ethical judgments use
the predicates ' right ' and * wrong.'

The special value, however, of these specific valuations
and their functions in the organization of Life form no
part of the purpose of Psychology. Having a merely
descriptive purpose, it is content to record all values
merely as made, and as facts. Thus it is psychologically
relevant to recognize that the predication of ' true ' and
' false ' occurs, and that what A judges ' true,' B may
judge to be ' false.' But it is psychologically indifferent
that A is a much better judge than B. Psychology, that
is, does not seek to evaluate these claims, to decide which
is really ' right,' or what is really ' true ' ; still less to frame
generalizations as to how in general claims are to be sus-
tained, and humanly valid judgments to be attained. All
processes of immanently and reciprocally criticizing,
systematizing, harmonizing, and utilizing the claims
actually made fall as such without its purpose : they are
the business of Logic.

§ 4. The relation of the two sciences to cognitive process,
and to each other, is thus quite simple. Yet it has been
woefully misunderstood. Thus it is commonly asserted
that Psychology does not recognize values, nor Logic care
about psychical existence. Yet if so, how could values enter
human minds, and how could truths ever become facts ? ^

^ Cp. Humanism, p. 163.

- No one, probably, has given greater currency to this fallacious notion than
Mr. Bradley, by the sharp contrast he drew in his Logic (ch. i. e.g. pp. 7, 8, and
p. 526) between the validity of the ' idea ' ( = concept) and the psychical existence
of the 'idea' ( = mental image). It has, unfortunately, not been as extensively

Ill LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 77

Still more extraordinary is the assumption that Psy-
chology is not to describe values. Yet this assumption is
made without the least consciousness of its monstrosity, and
without the slightest attempt to defend it, as if it were
self-evident, by writers of repute. Dr. Hastings Rashdall
gravely assures us that " the Psychologist . . . knows
nothing of the truth or falsity of judgments." ^ And even
Prof. Hoernle takes it for granted" that "truth, in fact, is not
an object of inquiry to Psychology at all. That certain
of the mental processes which it studies have the further
character of being ^ true or false, is, for Psychology, an
accident," and infers that " this inability to deal with
validity seems to beset all psychologies alike." This
arbitrary restriction on the functions of Psychology is no
doubt in the interest of an impracticable conception of
Logic, which instinctively seeks to reduce Psychology to
an equal or greater futility ; but we, assuredly, can have
no reason to accept it.

For us the function of Logic develops continuously,
rationally, and without antagonism, out of that of
Psychology. Cognitive values and claims to truth exist
as empirical facts. If they were all indefeasible, con-
gruous, and compatible with each other, as, e.g. my having

recognized that his remark in Appearaiice and Reality (p. 51), that "it is not
wholly true that 'ideas are not what they mean,' for if their meaning is not
psychical fact, I should like to know how and where it exists," \s, inter alia, a
scornful self-correction.

Prof. Bosanquet [Logic, i. p. 5) declares that "in considering an idea as a
psychical occurrence we abstract from its meaning" ; but ibid. ii. p. 16 n,, he
advocates the remarkable doctrine that ' ' when psychical images come to be
employed for the sake of a meaning which they convey, they ex hypothesi are
not treated as fact. And their meaning is not itself a psychical fact, but is an
intellectual activity which can only enter into fact by being used to qualify
reality." This is sufficiently oracular, and it would be interesting to hear the
reasons why Psychology should be debarred from recognizing ' intellectual
activities ' as psychical facts.

^ Arist. Soc. Proc, 1905-6, p. 249.

- Mind, xiv. p. 473.

•* This should be ' claiming to be' \ for no one supposes that Psychology is
concerned with the decision between conflicting claims to truth. Whether what
claims to be true really is true, is admittedly left to Logic. Here, however, it
seems to be argued that because Psychology cannot decide between claims, it may
not even register them, nor describe cognitive values. I fear that Prof. Hoernle
throughout has not steered quite clear of the confusion between clai/n (psycho-
logical fact) and validation (logical fact), which so effectively vitiates the intel-
lectualistic theories of truth. For the distinction see Essay v., especially § i.

78 STUDIES IN HUMANISM m

a toothache is compatible with your not having one, there
would be no ground for a further science. But in point
of i^cX. false claims to truth are commoner than valid ones,
and they not only conflict with ' the truth,' but also with
each other, so that the problem of Error cries out for
further treatment.

§ 5. There is need, therefore, for a discipline which
will evaluate these claims, and try to determine the various
degrees of validity and trustworthiness which may be
assigned to them. Logic is the traditional name for the
science which undertakes this function. It may be defined
as the systematic evaluation of actual knowing. It is a
normative science, because it not only records defects,
but prescribes remedies ; it reflects on the claims actually
made, and prescribes methods for their evaluation. But
its normative function arises quite naturally out of our
actual procedures, when we observe that some cogni-
tive processes are in fact more valuable than others,
and select the more valuable among conflicting claims.
Thus the need for Logic, its genesis and its procedures,
all seem to be essentially empirical, and it is quite
conceivable that no special science of Logic should ever
have arisen. If all claims were ipso facto true and
valid, if we had never been confronted with conflicting
claims or driven by our ' errors ' to rescind our first
assertions, what need were there for Logic ? Our attention
would never be called to the problem of values, our primary
attributions would stand, and no superior science would be
devised to adjudicate between conflicting judgments.

As it is, the natural process has to be regulated and
controlled, and so falls a prey to two sciences. The same
cognitive values occur twice over, first in Psychology as so
many facts, then in Logic, as subjects for critical evalua-
tion. Nor is it difficult to understand how two sciences
can work over the same ground : they cultivate it with a
different purpose, and so raise different crops.

§ 6. It is manifest, moreover, that the two sciences must
work together hand in glove. Logic requires trustworthy
descriptions of cognitive happenings before it can evaluate

m LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 79

them with safety ; for these it should be able to rely on
the co-operation of Psychology. In other words, the
collection and preparation of the material which the
logician proposes to use is essentially a psychological
function, alike whether it is performed by a psychologist
who bears in mind the need of Logic and the needs of
Logic, or whether the logician is enough of a psychologist
to do it for himself. In the latter case he resembles a
painter who, like those of old, makes and mixes his own
colours ; the logician, on the other hand, who proposes to
dispense with the aid of Psychology is like a painter who
will not use anything so gross as colours wherewithal to
paint his ' ideal ' pictures.

Thus Logic and Psychology, though perfectly distinct,
are perfectly inseparable. It is, moreover, because they
are so intimately related that they must be so sharply
distinguished, and because they have been so clearly dis-
tinguished that they can be so closely connected. It is
hardly possible to exaggerate the intimacy of their
relations. Nothing psychological can be affirmed a priori
to be irrelevant to Logic. The logician, no doubt, from
motives of practical convenience or necessity, often abstracts
provisionally from trivial characteristics of the actual psychic
process ; but, except in cases where he has learnt from ex-
perience what features are unessential and may safely be
neglected, he always takes a certain risk in so doing.
Now this risk may be fatal to the validity of his argument,
and in any case impairs its theoretical exactness. The
formal logician, therefore, can never, as such, claim to be
the Jinal judge of the value of any argument. He can
never by his ' rules ' preclude the examination of its
' material ' worth ; however formally perfect the syllogism
which expresses it, a fatal flaw may lurk in its actual
application ; however grotesque its formal fallacy, a road
to the truth may be barred by its rejection. If he is wise,
therefore, he will not magnify his office of reminding
reasoners of what they are about, and of how far their
reasonings are attaining the ends they aim at. Thus the
burden of proof, at any rate, lies on those who affirm that

8o STUDIES IN HUMANISM m

the logician may assume the irrelevance of any psychic
fact.

Nay, more. One never can tell whether the proper
answer to a ' logical ' claim does not lie in the psycho-
logical domain, and take the form of a psychological
explanation. Thus a claim to have discovered the
secret of the universe is not usually met by a ' logical '
refutation, but by an inquiry into the assertor's ' state of
mind,' and the revelations of mystic ecstasies are treated
as exhibitions of mental pathology. We know, in short,
that it is folly to reason with the mentally deranged, and
that, even in dealing with the sane, it is usually more
effective to persuade than to convince.

We may take it, therefore, that the logician's ignoring
of Psychology, and abstracting from the psychical con-
comitants of actual thinking, can only be very hazardous
affairs, which must be understood to be strictly conditioned
and limited by the requirements of his temporary purpose.
When the logician really knows what he is about he does
not intend them to be more than provisional, nor dream
of transcending human experience by their aid. Unfortun-
ately, however, this simple situation has been misappre-
hended so long, and so profoundly, that it is imperative to
set forth in greater detail the thoroughgoing dependence
of Logic on psychological assistance. We shall do well,
therefore, to show (i) that without processes which are
admittedly psychological the occurrence of cognition, and
even of thinking, is impossible ; (2) that all the processes,
which are regarded as essentially and peculiarly ' logical,'
have a well-marked psychological side to them, and that
their logical treatment develops continuously out of their
psychological nature.

§ 7. (i) All actual thinking appears to be inherently
conditioned throughout by processes which even the
most grasping logician must conceive as specifically
psychological. It is difficult to see, therefore, on what
principle logic has any business to ignore them, and to
claim to be ' independent ' of what must influence its
own structures in every fibre. At any rate the onus

Ill LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 8i

probandi would seem to He on those who affirm that
these correlated and interpenetrating processes do not
influence each other, and that, therefore, their psychical
nature may be treated as logically irrelevant. Without,
however, standing on ceremony, let us show by actual
examples that our thinking depends for its very existence
on the presence in it of {a) interest, {U) purpose, {c)
emotion, id) satisfaction, and that the word ' thought '
would cease to convey any meaning if these were really
and rigidly abstracted from.

{a) Where can we discover anything deserving of the
name of thought which is not actuated by psychological
interest? To affirm this, moreover, seems merely a
truism. It is merely to deny that thinking is a
mechanical process like, e.g. gravitation. It is to assert
that the processes during which the course of conscious-
ness comes nearest to being a purposeless flux of mental
images are most remote from cognition. It is to deny
that thinking proceeds without a motive and without an
aim, and to assert that, in proportion as interest grows
more disciplined and concentrated, thought becomes more
vigorous and more definitely purposive.

The only way of contesting our inference would seem
to be to affirm that the specifically logical interest is
sui generis, and not to be confounded with the common
herd of its psychological congeners.^ This contention,
however, we must regard as merely an arbitrary fiat. It
is merely a refusal to let Psychology describe all interests
as such. And this refusal can only be prompted by
ulterior motives. Moreover, even if the allegiance this
special interest owes to Logic exempted it from psycho-
logical description, it could do so only qua its specific
nature. As an interest it would still fall into the province

1 This I take to be the meaning of Prof. Bosanquet's remarks in Arist.
Soc. Proc. 1905-6, p. 238. He insists that it can either be "adequately in-
vestigated within the bounds of logic proper," so as to leave nothing for "a
further scrutiny of these phenomena as purely psychical disturbances," or that
the common psychological element can make no specific difference in the logical
interest. But how, as a logician, is he to know all this ? And how if the
psychologists dispute this claim ? He is setting up as a judge in a case to which
he is a party.

82 STUDIES IN HUMANISM

of the science which describes the generic nature of
interests. Lastly, a Humanist Logic can recognize no
reasons for relegating the cognitive interest to a world
apart, as if it were unconcerned with life and dissociated
from personality. On all these grounds, then, we must
repudiate the claim that a thought which depends on
interest can be independent of Psychology.

[b) Purpose may be conceived as a concentration of
interest, and thinking must be conceived as essentially
purposive, and as the more consciously so, the more
efficient it grows. Whenever Logic, therefore, seeks to
represent the actual nature of thinking, it can never treat
of 'the meaning' of propositions in the abstract. It
must note that the meaning depends on the use, and the
use on the user's purpose. Now this purpose is primarily
a question of psychical fact, which admits of being
psychologically determined, and which no theory can
safely ignore. If we attribute to logical rules a sort of
inherent validity, a sort of discarnate existence apart from
their application to cases of actual thinking, we reduce
them to phantoms as futile as they are unintelligible.

{c) Emotion accompanies actual cognition as a shadow
does light. Even so unexciting an operation as counting has
an emotional tone. The effect of this emotional tone seems
to be various, but may be salutary ; we can often observe
how love and hate inspire men with an insight to which
the fish-like eye of cold indifference could never penetrate.
It need not be denied, however, that in some people and
in some forms it may have a hurtful effect on the value
of the cognitive results. But this must be shown, and
cannot be assumed, in any given case. Nor is its alleged
hurtfulness a reason for denying the existence of this
emotional bias, except to those who are very far gone
in that application of * Christian Science ' to philosophy
which declares all evil to be ' appearance.' Our only
chance of counteracting emotional bias, moreover, lies in
admitting its existence.

{d) If a feeling of satisfaction did not occur in cognitive
processes the attainment of truth would not be felt to

Ill LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 83

have value. In point of fact such satisfactions super-
vene on every step in reasoning. Without them, logical
* necessity,' ' cogency,' and ' insight ' would become mean-
ingless words.

It seems clear, therefore, that without these psycho-'
logical conditions which have been mentioned, thinking
disappears, and with it, presumably, Logic.^ They can-
not, therefore, be dispensed with. Purpose, interest, desire,
emotion, satisfaction, are more essential to thinking than
steam is to a steam-engine.

§ 8. (2) The most fundamental conceptions of Logic,
like 'necessity,' 'certainty,' 'self-evidence,' 'truth,' 'meaning,'
are primarily descriptions of processes which are psychical
facts. They are inseparably accompanied by specific
psychical feelings. What is called their ' strictly logical '
sense is continuous with their psychological senses, and
whenever this connexion is really broken off, its meaning
simply disappears. This need not here be set forth at
length. The logician's embarrassments in discriminating
' logical ' from ' psychological ' necessity ^ and self-evidence
are well known. It is also beginning to be clear that
he had not, until the pragmatic controversy arose, ever
seriously considered what was the nature of truth-pre-
dication as a psychic process.

But the conception of ' certainty ' is often considered
the essential differentia of logical thought, and, therefore,
may deserve a brief discussion. Every one, of course,
would have to admit that all ' certainty ' in its actual
occurrence was accompanied by a psychical feeling of
certainty in various degrees of intensity. An appeal
might, however, be made to the distinction of ' logical '
and ' psychological ' certainty. Psychological certainty,
we commonly say, is ' subjective,' and exists for in-
dividuals ; ' logical ' certainty is ' objective,' and imposed
on intelligence as such. Again, psychological certainty
may set in long before logical proof is complete, often

^ Some symbolic logicians, however, seem to regard thinking, i.e. judging
and inferring, as so inherently psychological as to be extra-logical. Cp. Formal
Logic, p. 377.

^ Cp. Personal Idealism, p. 70 n.

84 STUDIES IN HUMANISM m

long before it ought ; and conversely our psychological
stupidity may rebel against mathematically demonstrated
truths. From these current distinctions the logician is
apt to infer that psychological and logical certainty have
really nothing to do with each other and ought not to be
confused. But if this be true, why are they both called
by the same name ? Surely, if logicians wished to keep
them apart and could afford to do so, they could label
them differently. That they have not done so is a
strong presumption that it is impracticable.

Indeed, the truth would seem to be, {a) that if the
feeling of certainty is eliminated the word becomes un-
meaning, and {b) that ' logical ' is quite continuous with
psychological certainty. The notion of * logical ' certainty
arises from the extension of potential beyond actual
purpose in thinking. We actually stop at the point at
which we psychologically are satisfied and willing to
accept a claim to truth as good ; but we can sometimes
conceive ulterior purposes which would require further
confirmation, and other minds that would be satisfied less
easily. This engenders the ideal of a complete ' logical '
proof transcending that which is good enough for us, and
capable of compelling the assent of all intelligences. But
even if it could be attained, its certainty would still be
psychological, as certainly psychological as is our capacity
to project the ideal. Both are dependent on the actual
powers of individual minds. Thus for the moment
mathematical demonstration seems to satisfy the logical
ideal of most intellectualist logicians, and is praised as
absolutely certain. But that they think it so is merely
psychical fact. For the reason simply is that so far they
do not seem to have psychologically conceived the thought
of varying the postulates on which such demonstration
rests. If they had recognized the hypothetical basis of
mathematical certainty, they could conceive something
more ' certain.'

§ 9. The fundamental logical operations, like meaning,
conceiving, discriminating, identifying, judging, inferring, all
have psychological aspects, and could not come about by

m LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 85

'pure' thought. I have suggested elsewhere^ that logical
identity is always a postulate. It should be stated as that
' what I will shall mean the same, is {so far) the sained
And by * the same ' I do not mean indistinguishable
(though this criterion too rests on a psychological property)
as Mr. Bradley does in what he considers " the indis-
putable basis of all reasoning," the axiom that " what
seems the same is the same" which he himself calls " a
monstrous assumption."^ Logical identity emphatically
does not rest on an easy acquiescence in appearances or
psychical carelessness about noticing differences. It is
a conscious act of purposive thinking, performed in spite
of observed differences, ' The same ' means a claim that
for our purposes these differences may be ignored, and
the two terms treated alike.

The principle, therefore, is not mere psychological fact,
carrying no logical consequences. Nor certainly is it a
mere tautology, ' A is A.' It is ultimately one of the
devices we have hit upon for dealing with our experience.
As such it may be supposed to have passed through an
experimental stage as a mere postulate ; and even now a
certain risk remains inherent in its use. That there shall
be identity we have good grounds for insisting, but our
claim that any A is A may often be frustrated. That
therefore every attempted ' identification ' should come
true, would be the experience only of an omnipotent
being, whose volitions the course of events could never
contravene. Only to such a being (if such can be
conceived) would it be self- evidently, invariably, and
' necessarily ' true that * A is A ' ; in our human thinking
the identities we select may prove to be mistaken. Thus
the validity of the principle in the abstract in no wise
guarantees its validity in its actual use, or its application
to any particular case. But on the whole the principle
is valuable enough for us to ascribe our failures, not to
its inapplicability to our world, but to our own stupidity
in selecting the ' wrong ' identities.

' Personal Idealism, pp. 94-104. Formal Logic, ch. .\. §§ 8, 10.
2 Principles of Logic, p. 264.

86 STUDIES IN HUMANISM m

Meaning is a psychical fact which should have great
interest for Psychology. It is also a fundamental function
for Logic. But unfortunately intellectualist logicians, by
abstracting too easily from its concrete nature as a
psychical process, have involved the whole subject in
confusion and completely obscured the problem of under-
standing.

As we saw in Essay i. § 2, meaning depends upon
purpose, i.e. upon context, as the purpose lies in the con-
text. Now that context is of logical importance is, in a
manner, recognized. But this recognition takes the form
of asserting that the meaning (and truth) of an assertion
depends on the totality of knowledge ; and this at once
rules out human knowledge. For as we cannot know
this totality, if meaning depends on this, it is impossible.
This interpretation of context, however, is quite false.
Meaning is not in the first instance logical at all, but
psychological. It is primarily a question of what the
person who made the assertion actually meant. And as,
of course, the whole of his concrete personality went to the
making of the assertion, and contributed to his actual
meaning, a case must be made out for its mutilation
by ' Logic' The next question is the problem of the
' understanding ' or transference of the meaning. We
have to discover not merely what the assertor meant, but
also how he was understood. The inherent difficulty of
this problem, to which since the days of Gorgias ' Logic '
has paid little heed, lies in this that practically meaning
must be transferred by verbal symbols, and conveyed in
' propositions.' But such propositions must always be
ambiguous. They may mean whatever they can be
used to mean. They are blank forms to be filled up
with concrete meanings according to requirements. They
afford, therefore, no security that the meaning which they
are taken as conveying is identical with that which they
were intended to convey. Until we have assured our-
selves of this, it is vain to discuss ' the meaning ' of the
assertion, or to attempt its logical e -aluation. Conse-
quently the logical treatment of meaning is meaning-

m LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 87

less, until these psychological preliminaries have been
settled.

What now is the way in which these matters have
been treated by ' Logic ' ? It has made a series of
monstrous abstractions, which break down as soon as
they are applied to the facts of actual knowing.

(i) It has abstracted from context, i.e. from the
actual context in which the assertion was made and
tried to convey its meaning, as being psychological and
irrelevant. This is a gigantic blunder, after which it is
vain to seek to provide for the ' logical ' relevance of
context. For the * logical ' context never recovers its full
concreteness, and so can never guarantee to ' Logic ' a
knowledge of the actual meaning. (2) It has framed
the abstraction of ' the logical meaning ' of the assertion,
which it has usually conceived also as existing per se
and independently of human assertors, and taken it for
granted that it could be used as the standard to which
to refer the meanings meant and understood. But in
actual knowing ' the meaning ' is the problem. It is not
what we may presume, but what we must discover. It
is an ideal to be reached, and not a presupposition to be
started from. It does not exist ; it has to be made — by
mutual understanding. Moreover, for the reasons given
above, the abstract ' meaning per se ' of the assertion
reduces itself in practice to the average meaning of a
form of words which will probably be used in a certain
sense, but may be used in any sense in which any one
can convey (or try to convey) his meaning. * The mean-
ing,' therefore, is infinitely ambiguous} And hence to
operate with it is always hazardous and often false. (3)
In abstracting from the assertor's actual meaning, * Logic'
always runs the risk of excluding the real point. For
this may lie in some of the ' irrelevant ' psychical details
of the actual meaning, whose essence may not lie in
its plain surface meaning, but in some subtle innuendo.

^ Thus the assertion ' Smith is red-haired ' has as many ' meanings ' as there
are past, actual, and potential 'Smiths,' of whom it can be (truly or falsely)
predicated, and occasions on which it can be made.

88 STUDIES IN HUMANISM m

Moreover, even where ' the logical meaning ' does not
miss the real point, it nearly always fails to convey the
whole meaning. For the actual meaning is fully concrete,
and contains much more than it conveys, and infinitely
more than ' the logical meaning ' of the form of words.
The latter, therefore, is always something less than what
was actually meant, and fails to express it fully. For
the appropriateness of an assertion always depends in
some degree on the personality of the assertor and the
particularity of the occasion. (4) ' Logic,' in abstracting
from the psychological problem, has burked the whole
question of the communication of meaning. It has
assumed that there is only one meaning with which it
need concern itself, and that every one must understand
it. In point of fact, there are usually two or more
meanings concerned in every question. For the assertor
commonly fails to convey his meaning, or his whole
meaning, and his assertion is taken in a meaning
different from that in which it was meant. There are,
in consequence, at least as many ' meanings ' as parties
to the discussion, and the ' logic ' which is concerned only
about * the meaning ' is troubling about the non-existent.
Whereas if it were recognized that what is called * the
meaning ' is an indication, but not a guarantee, of the
real meaning, and that the meaning understood may not
be that intended, we should take more care to secure a
real identity of meaning before beginning to dispute, and
so the chances are that many ' logical questions ' would
never arise.

(5) Lastly, 'Logic' has assumed not only that 'the
meaning ' of an assertion can be ascertained without
regard to the psychological facts, but also that it can
be quite dissociated from the personality of its assertor.
It becomes, consequently, a matter of indifference whether
it was made by A or by B, nay even whether or not it
was (or could be) made by any one. Whoever made it,
' it ' is equally true, even though A was a fool or a crank
asserting it at random, and B a great authority who
knows the subject. Our common-sense accordingly pro-

in LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 89

tests against this paradox, and urges that the status of
the assertor must make a difference to the assertion.
And the practice of science would seem to bear this out.
The logical value of an assertion is constantly treated as
conditioned by the qualifications of its author. If these
are adequate, it is received with respect ; if they are nil,
it is treated as scientifically null and disregarded. Thus
dozens of sailors have sighted sea-serpents, but the
testimony of the two competent naturalists on the
Valhalla is far more likely to shake the incredulity
of zoologists.^ On the other hand, when Prof Curie
reported the extraordinary and unparalleled properties
of radium, his assertions were at once accepted. The
solution of the paradox lies of course in the falsity of
the assertion that when two persons ' say the same
thing ' (i.e. use the same form of words') they make the
same assertion. They really make two assertions, which
may (or may not) subsequently be made to coincide and
identified with the (usual) meaning of the proposition
they use. But they need not mean the same thing, nor
understand alike. They will probably make the assertion
on different grounds, and will certainly have different
motives and aims. What their assertion means will vary
accordingly. And so will its logical value, which here
plainly shows itself as dependent on psychological circum-
stances. Why then should * Logic ' stubbornly blind itself
to these facts, and insist on cutting meaning loose from
its psychological roots, and on confounding in its abstract

* forms ' cases which all actual knowing must discriminate ?
The practical convenience and rough adequacy of the
easy-going convention that * the meaning ' may be taken
as identical with the meanings meant and understood, is
surely no defence an intellectualistic logical theory can plead
against the charge of false abstraction and inadequate
analysis.

As regards judging, it may suffice to suggest that

* the judgment ' is as dangerous an abstraction as ' the
meaning ' which is ascribed to it. For what is called one

^ Cp. Nature, No. 1914, p. 202.

90 STUDIES IN HUMANISM m

is usually many. It follows, moreover, from our last dis-
cussion both that every judgment, in its actual use, is an
intimately personal affair, and that its personal aspects
often have (and always may have) important bearings on
its logical value. No judgment could come into being,
even in the world of thought, if some individual mind
were not impelled by its total psychical contents and
history to affirm it upon some suitable occasion, and to
stake its fortunes on this personal affirmation. And even
after it has come into being, its logical status is still
vitally dependent on its relations to the minds which
entertain it. The judgment, therefore, essentially presup-
poses a mind, a motive, and a purpose. To ' deperson-
alize' it is to do violence to its concrete nature. Similarly,
its ' objective validity ' is not a question of the interrelation
of absolute static truths in a supercelestial sphere. It
depends on its adaptation to our world and its congruous-
ness with the opinions and aims of others. Hence every
recognition of a judgment by others is a social problem,
often of a very complicated character.

To bring out the unreality of the logician's conception
of Judgment, we may note also that ' Logic ' is always
held to exclude the evaluation of questions and com-
mands. And yet are not postulates often the basis of
our reasonings, and are not all real judgments the implicit
or explicit answers to a question ? Does any sane person
knowingly argue about what is universally admitted }
Ought it not to be truly ' illogical,' then, to sever the
connexion between things which belong so closely together ?
To confine Logic to categorical statements in the indica-
tive mood, is to abstract at one blow from the sense and
actual use of judgments. Contrast with this an intel-
lectualist view of the question's function. Prof. Bosanquet,
e.g. is " disposed to doubt whether we can interrogate
ourselves " otherwise than rhetorically, and urges that
questions which we cannot answer and know that we
cannot answer cannot be " genuine questions." He con-
cludes that " thus a question cannot be an act of thought
as such, just as a lie is not, and for the same reason, that

Ill LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 91

it is not an attitude that the intellect can maintain within
itself. ... It is a demand for information ; its essence is
to be addressed to a moral agent, not ourselves, in whom
it may produce action" {Logic, i. p. 36).

Clearly, however, this whole paradox rests on the
abstraction of truth from its consequences, on the divorce
of ' thought ' from its psychical context. The question is
taken as unrelated to anything that precedes and follows.
If this is done, only two cases remain ; we ask ourselves
a question to which we either do, or do not, know the
answer. And of course the question is in both cases
futile. In actual knowing, however, we only ask our-
selves questions where, though we do not yet know the
answers, we want to know thefu and are willing to take
steps to find them out. A question, therefore, is logically
futile only if we decline to act on it, and this would be
equally true of a question addressed to others, if they,
similarly, did not react upon it. Really, therefore, the
putting of questions is, as the Greeks well knew, a natural
and necessary process as a preliminary to the satisfaction
of a cognitive need, and one which may be of the greatest
value, if the right questions are clearly formulated.

§ 10. Lastly, not so much because further illustration
should be needed, as in order to force a clear issue, let us
consider one more case, that which has been most dis-
puted, viz. that of reasoning openly inspired by desire,
i.e. of a conclusion affirmed because we should like it to
be true. Is it always true that we attain truth only by
suppressing desire ? Take the familiar argument : The
world is bad, therefore there must be a better. It all rests
on the desire for good and the postulate of perfection.
Now if postulation is as such invalid, and desire a mere
obstacle to truth, it clearly follows that this argument is
hopelessly illogical ; which is accordingly what intellectu-
alist logicians have everywhere maintained.^ A bad world

^ Qua human they have, of course, not infrequently relapsed into the postu-
latory way of reasoning. Thus it is a favourite inference from the fact that all the
parts of the world are imperfect, that the whole must be perfect. But if in this
case it is legitimate to argue to the ideal from the defects of the actual, why not in
others ?

92 STUDIES IN HUMANISM ni

is logically evidence against^ not for, the existence of a
better.

Now, against such abstract and a priori notions of
what is good reasoning, we may lay it down that good
reasoning is that which leads us right and enables us to
discover what we are willing to acclaim as truth. And
so tested the desire-inspired reasoning may clearly often
be the better. It may prompt to more active inquiry, to
keener observation, to more persevering experiment. The
logician who declares de non apparentibus et non existentibus
eadem est ratio, who declines to look for what he wants
but does not see, who does not seek to penetrate beyond
the veil of appearances, is, frankly, an ass. He frustrates
his avowed purpose, the discovery of truth, by debarring
himself from whatever truth lies beneath the surface.
His self-approbation, therefore, of the heroic self-sacrifice
of his volitional preferences to ' objective truth ' which he
' feels himself bound ' to commit, is simply silly. What
right, indeed, has he even to ' feel bound ' ? Does not the
phrase betray the emotional origin also of his attitude to
truth ? He accomplishes the sacrifice of * personal pre-
ference ' to ' objective truth ' by dint of an emotional
desire to mortify himself (or, more often, others), the
satisfaction of which appears to him as a good. How
then is he other or better than the voluntarist who makes
bold to postulate, and verifies his anticipations ?

Moreover, if we supply the missing premiss in the
contention of the intellectualist, we find that it must take
a form something like this, that it is wrong to anticipate
nature, to go beyond what you can see, wicked to try
whether the apparent ' facts ' cannot be moulded or re-
moulded into conformity with our desires. He must say
' it is wrong^ He cannot say ' it is impossible.' For
it is constantly done, and with the happiest effects.

If now we ask, WJiy wrong ? we force the intellectualist
to reveal the full measure of his prejudice. To defend
his assumption he must do one of two things: (i) He
may fall back upon his own feeling of the aesthetical or
ethical impropriety of the voluntarist's procedure. But if

Ill LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 93

so, his objection ceases to be purely logical. It may be
declared to be only his idiosyncrasy, and be met by the
retort — " but it does not seem improper to me. I do not,
will not, and cannot share your devil-worship of disagreeable
fact and unwelcome truth. I do not, cannot, and will
not call a universe good which does not satisfy my desires,
and I feel strongly that it ougJit to do so. Whether it
does, or can be made to do so, I do not know as yet ; it
is one of the chief things I am staying in the universe to
find out. If {a) it does, or can, then my desires are to be
regarded as a sound, logical indication of the nature of
reality and a valid method of penetrating to its core. If
{b) it does not, I may have, no doubt, to admit unwelcome
truths and unpalatable facts. But I shall do so provision-
ally, and with a clear intention of abolishing them as soon
and as far as I am able. If {c) it sometimes does, and
sometimes not, why then I am entitled, nay bound, to
try both methods. I have a right both to treat my wishes
as clues to reality, and to subordinate them on occasion
to facts which are too strong for me. And I observe that
(whether you approve or blame) this is what, in fact, men
have always done."

If (2) the intellectualist tries to find something more
objective than his instinctive feeling of the wrongness of
the voluntarist's procedure, what resource has he ? Must
he not appeal to the consequences of the two methods ?
Must he not try to show that the consequences of sub-
mission are always, or mostly, good — those of postulation
always, or mostly, bad ? But can he show this ?
Notoriously he cannot. And in either case has he not
used the pragmatic test of logical value ?

It is vain, therefore, to seek an escape from the con-
clusion that actual thinking is pervaded and conditioned
through and through by psychological processes, and that
Logic gains nothing, and loses all vitality and interest, all
touch with reality, by trying to ignore them. To em-
phasize this is not, of course, to deny that for logical
purposes some psychological conditions may sometimes
be irrelevant. Thus in using concepts it is generally

94 STUDIES IN HUMANISM m

possible to abstract from the particular nature of the
psychological imagery. The reason is that identity of
meaning overpowers diversity of imagery ; if this were
otherwise, the use of concepts would be impossible.
Again an error, say of counting, may be psychologically
a very complex fact ; it may, nevertheless, be logically
a very simple error. By my counting 2 and 3 as 6,
there may hang a lengthy tale ; but for the logician it
may be enough to say that the result ought to have been
5. It should be observed, however, even here, that the
logical description of this process as an ' error ' involves
an appeal to psychology ; the error could not be recognized
as such but for my capacity to correct it, or at least to
admit the validity of processes which enable others to
correct it. If I were psychologically incapable of counting
2 + 3 as other than 6, I could not recognize my ' error,'
a ' common ' arithmetic would disappear, and there would
remain no way of deciding which process was counting
and which miscounting, but the experience of the respec-
tive consequences and the slow test of survival.

§ II. Whenever, then, the logician abstracts from the
concrete facts of reasoning, he should do so with a con-
sciousness of the nature and dangers of his procedure.
He should feel that he may have left out what is essential,
that ne may have failed to notice the actual meaning of
the thought he examined, and have substituted for it some
wholly different imagination of his own. The proposition
which he solemnly writes down an ' error ' or a ' fallacy '
may not have been a prosaic affirmation at all ; it may
have been poetical hyperbole or an hypothesis, a jest or
a sarcasm, a trap or a lie. He will, therefore, get a very
little way into the analysis of actual thinking if he
declines to recognize that in its actual use the same form
of words may serve all these purposes, and cannot be
treated logically until he has found out what its actual
meaning is. A lie is, I presume, a proposition which
claims truth like any other. But the claim is for export
only ; the liar himself knows it to be ' false,' and has
rejected the claim, even though he has persuaded all the

in LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 95

world. There is no ' He ' unless there is deception, and no
deception unless there are deceivers and deceived. The
difference of the persons concerned, therefore, is essential.
How then can ' the meaning ' of such a proposition be
represented as single and simple ? How can its logical
status even be discussed without going into these facts ?
Does it not follow that Formal logicians have no right to
their habit of speaking of ' the meaning ' of a proposition
as if it were a logical fixture ? The actual meaning is
always a psychical fact, which in the case of an ambiguity
intended, implied, or understood, may be many. The
' logical ' meaning is potential ; it is at best the average
meaning with which the proposition is most commonly
used. It is only more or less probable, therefore, as the
interpretation of an actual judgment. And to build a
system of apodictic doctrine on foundations such as these
what is it but to build a house of cards ?

It would be possible to show in this manner, and with
the utmost fulness and unlimited examples, that vastly
more than the text-books recognize is really relevant to
Logic, that every logical process, conception, method, and
criterion springs naturally and continuously out of psycho-
logical soil, and is essentially a selection from, and valuation
of, a more extensive psychical material. But enough has
probably been said to suggest that Logic can take nothing
for granted, and itself least of all. In view of the complete
dependence and reliance of every logical process on the
psychical nature of man in general and of men in particular,
in view of the manifest adjustment of every logical prin-
ciple to the needs of human life, is it not high time that
a systetnatic doubt were cast on the assumption that the
theory of knowledge -must abstract from the personality of
the knowerl

§ 1 2. It should now be clear what is the meaning, the
ground and the aim of our Humanist ' psychologism,' but
we may clinch the argument by supplementing it nega-
tively by a proof that the antagonistic conception of an
'independent' Logic (i) involves unintelligible and self-
contradictory misdescriptions ; (2) assumes a standpoint

96 STUDIES IN HUMANISM m

which it cannot justify, and (3) is so unable to deal with
actual knowing, that (4) it ends in scepticism and intel-
lectual collapse. It will be seen, in short, that the
intellectualistic treatment of Logic " necessarily conducts
to a complete debacle of the intellect." ^

It has already been implied that it is usual to formulate
the conception, and to expound the claims, of Logic in an
anti-psychological way radically opposed to ours. One
still hears of Logic as the science of ' pure ' thought,
endowed with a standpoint and nature of its own, which
is ' free ' and ' independent ' of man and human psychology,
and anything it may do or say about such merely human
processes as ' willing ' and ' feeling,' as a science which by
' depersonalizing ' itself has risen to communion with the
eternal and immutable Ideal, and of course cares not one
jot about our personal interests or attitude towards truth.

These epithets, however, are chiefly ornamental, and
merely serve to curry favour for the assumptions on which
it is attempted to rest the science.

(i) The notion of * pure thought,' for example, must not
be pressed. It is not a fact of actual knowing, but a
barefaced fiction, which can at most be defended as a
methodological necessity for the purposes of intellectualist
logicians. Its fictitious nature has nowadays to be
avowed, whenever it is directly challenged. Even Mr.
Bradley " agrees " with Prof. Dewey, that " there is no
such existing thing as pure thought," — it is true only
just before proceeding to declare that " if there is to be
no such thing as independent thought, thought that is
which in its actual exercise takes no account of the
psychological situation^ I am, myself, in the end, led in-
evitably to scepticism. The doctrine that every judgment
essentially depends on the eyitire psychical state of the
individual, and derives from this its falsehood or truth,
is, I presume, usually taken to amount to complete
scepticism." ^ ' Pure thought,' then, is not to be the

^ Captain H. V. Knox in Mind, xiv. p. 210. Cp. Formal Logic.

2 Mind, xiii. p. 309 n. Italics mine. We learn from this amazing passage
that it is complete scepticism to take complete account of the facts in a cognitiv^e
procedure, and that if we will not deliberately falsify them, we are doomed to end

Ill LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 97

same as ' independent.' But what is ' pure ' thought pure
from ? Psychological contamination ? If so, will it not
coincide with ' independent ' thought ? For that too
" takes no account of the psychological situation." But
if so, has not an imperious need of Logic been equated
with a non-existent ? The puzzle grows more perplexing
when we recall the pronounced emotionalism which is
somehow combined with Mr. Bradley's intellectualism, and
to which Mr. Sturt has lately drawn attention.^ How can
an intellect so emotionally conditioned be either ' pure '
or ' independent ' ?

The truth, however, seems to be that the sacrifice of
* pure thought ' goes greatly against the grain of intellect-
ualism. Only constant vigilance can prevent it from
wriesling itself back into the claim to be an actual fact,
and whether intellectualism can afford wholly to dispense
with it, especially in its arguments about ' useless ' know-
ledge, seems more than doubtful.

(2) The * independence ' of Logic and its standpoint
is in every way a most difficult notion. It is hard to
understand, harder to derive, hardest to justify. Nay, in
the end it will turn out so anarchical as to be fatal to
the theory that entertained it. For the present, however,
it may suffice to point out the difficulty of ascertaining
the meaning of a word which is constantly employed in
current discussions, and never defined. Its meaning
appears to vary with the work it has to do. In its most
rigorous sense it describes the iniquity of pluralism in
claiming * independence ' for its reals, the impossibility of
which provides an a priori refutation of this metaphysical
' heresy.' ^ In this sense it means apparently ' totally
unconnected with.' A more lenient sense is in vogue

as sceptics ! It is surely strange that such falsification should be a necessary pre-
liminary to the search for truth, and one is tempted to reply, that if ' Logic '
demands this falsification, then the sooner the conception of Logic is amended
the better. But it is evidently Mr. Bradley who is predestined to scepticism ;
every theory of Logic he touches turns to scepticism in his hands, and even
when he flees to metaphysics he fares no better (cp. Essay iv. § 3). Probably
the peculiarity is, in his case, psychological.

1 Idola Theatri, ch. v. §§ 4-7.

2 Appearance and Reality, ch. x.

./ H

98 STUDIES IN HUMANISM m

when intellectualism has to defend its abstractions against
Humanist attacks. For in that case we learn, e.g. that
every Logic is ' independent ' of Psychology, nay, that
every well-conducted theoretic truth preserves a virtuous
independence. Similarly we are told by ' realists,' that
in the act of knowing the object of knowledge is quite
* independent ' of the knowing act. And, finally, Mr.
Bradley sometimes equates it with ' relative freedom ' ! ^
It is clear that if these ambiguities were done away with,
either the argument about the impossibility of pluralism,
or that about the independence of pure thought and
Logic, would have to disappear from the armoury of
our intellectualists.

(3) The ' depersonalization ' which is regarded as
characteristic of an ' independent ' Logic is usually
defended by the example of Science, which is said to
ignore all human interest as irrelevant. But this assertion
is hardly true. The abstraction practised by Science is
not analogous to that advocated for Logic. It is not true
that Science as such abstracts from all human interest.
It does not abstract from the scientist's interest in his
particular science. And this is still a human interest.
For it is what generates the science, and incites men to
its study.^ Psychologically it represents, not an absence^
but a concentration of interest, such as is demanded, more
or less, for the attainment of every purpose, and for the
satisfaction of every interest. And it can occur only in
a highly developed personality. The ' depersonalization,'
therefore, which is postulated for Logic obtains no support
whatever from scientific procedure. And we shall soon
see how ill it serves the ends of ' Logic'

(4) The analysis of psychic process into ' thinking,'
' willing,' and ' feeling,' in order to justify the restriction
of * Logic ' to the first and the exclusion of the two
latter, appears to be an unwarranted piece of amateur
psychologizing. For the analysis in question is valuable

1 Mind, xiii. p. 322, and cp. Essay iv. § 9 s.f.

* This remark, of course, is not inconsistent with the pragmatic doctrine
that all science is ultimately useful. For it refers only to the immediate
psychological motive.

in LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 99

only as a rough reference for popular purposes, and is
really a survival from the old ' faculty ' psychology.
Scientifically its descriptive, like its explanatory, value
is nil. No one nowadays seriously supposes that a
soul can actually be put together out of ' thought,'
' will,' and ' feeling,' or that this ' analysis ' represents its
actual genesis.^ For in actual knowing all three always
co-operate. There is no thought - process which is not
purposively initiated and directed {i.e. more or less ' willed '),
or which is not coloured by feelings and emotions. It is
false, therefore, to conceive ' thought ' in abstraction from
' will ' and ' feeling,' if we intend to examine actual
knowing. But it is just this intention which intellectualism
leaves in doubt. It is hard to see, therefore, why a
' thought,' which has abstracted from purpose, interest,
emotion, and satisfaction, should any longer be called
thought at all ; at any rate, it is no longer human thought,
and can have no relation to human life.

But the unfortunate fact remains that all these phrases
have long been taken for granted, with little or no
warrant or criticism. They are traditionally part and
parcel of an * independent ' Logic which has begged its
* standpoint!

§ 13. Formally this standpoint is bafflingly in-
determinate. It is neither consistently descriptive nor
consistently normative, but either, or both, as suits the
occasion. Sometimes it appeals to what logical procedure
actually is, sometimes to what it ideally ought to be ; i.e.
what by us would be called psychological and logical
considerations alternate in the most confusing way. In
its own phraseology this confusion is cloaked by its
conception of ' the logical Ideal,' which can be represented
either as what human thought naturally aspires to, or as
what controls its wayward vagaries.

Let us consider a few representative examples. Mr.
Bradley prefaces his Principles of Logic with the confession
that he is not sure where Logic begins or ends ; but no
attentive reader can fail to see that his ' Logic ' begins in

^ Cp. Essay iv. § lo.

100 STUDIES IN HUMANISM m

Psychology and ends in Scepticism. It is, moreover, just
because the standpoints of fact and of validity are so
inextricably mingled that nothing can save his ' Logic '
from surrender to Scepticism, except a desperate appeal
to metaphysics, the aid of which Appeai'ance and Reality
was subsequently to prove illusory.^

Prof. Bosanquet seems to incline more distinctly
to the descriptive standpoint. He declines to call Logic
normative; but calls its object ' self- normative.'"^ The
preface of his Logic tells us that " the conception of
Logical Science which has been my guide is that of an
unprejudiced study of the forms of knowledge in their
development, their interconnexion, and their comparative
value as embodiments of truth." In his discussion with
me he calls it " the science which considers the nature
of thought as manifested in a fully self- consistent
form." 2

Still, even here, both sides are observable. A ' study
of the forms of knowledge,' and of ' the nature of thought,'
sounds like a purely descriptive undertaking. But the
notion of ' comparative value ' is as distinctly normative ;

^ Cp. Essay iv. § 3. It need not, of course, be denied that nevertheless
Mr. Bradley's Logic is a great work, which has exercised a well - deserved
inflbance on English thought. But its defects are so glaring that its influence
has been very mixed. The sort of thing complained of may be illustrated,
e.g. by comparing Mr. Bradley's criticism of Mill's conception of induction
with his criticism of the syllogism. When he objects to the former that
induction is not proof, his standpoint is clearly that of validity. But when he
protests that the syllogism is not the universal form of (de facto) valid reasoning,
and gives ' specimens of inference ' which are not syllogistic as they stand
and rest on relations evident to us on empirical and psychological grounds, has
he not plainly passed over to the standpoint of description of the actual ?

2 Arist. Sac. Proc. 1905-6, p. 263. This looks suspiciously like an attempt
to run with the hares and to hunt with the hounds. At any rate, it involves
the ' depersonalization ' we have objected to, and ignores the fact that logical
norms are values y&r man, and the offspring of our interests.

^ L.c. p. 237. He gives as an alternative to this, "as manifest in the
endeavour to apprehend truth." But it would appear that, even in these
definitions. Logic has not succeeded in manifesting herself in a fully consistent
form. For even if we make explicit what is presumably intended, viz. that
they take ' truth ' as = ' the fully self - consistent form ' of thought (an
essentially formal view which seems to render it a wholly intrinsic affair of
thought, and to rule out all testing of our predications on the touchstone of
reality), the two definitions cannot be made to coincide. For ' the endeavoru-
to apprehend truth ' adds a consideration wholly extraneous and alien to the
formal self - consistency of thought, and one, moreover, which is plainly
psychological.

Ill LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY loi

so is that of a fixed ideal or ' system ' which claims to
regulate and control the natural development of cognitive
procedures, quite irrespective of their use as the means to
the ends of human knowing.

§ 1 4. This whole conception of the logical standpoint
is, however, open to the gravest objection. Qua descrip-
tive, it either instigates Logic to poach on the preserves
of Psychology, and to interfere with its functions, or, if
you please, to become itself Psychology. In the latter
case it must become bad or ignorant Psychology. In the
former case it must either prohibit Psychology from de-
scribing cognitive processes, or duplicate the psychological
descriptions. We should get, that is, a twofold descrip-
tion of the same events, the one dubbed ' Logic ' and the
other * Psychology.' One or the other of these would
surely be superfluous or mistaken. Or if both of them
could somehow {e.g. by a reference to the different
purposes of the two sciences ?) be maintained, it would
become necessary to consider their relation to each other.
This would be just as necessary, and much more difficult,
when both sciences are conceived as descriptive, as when
one is conceived as normative. For the attempt to adjust
their relations would have to start from an open conflict
about the ground each was to cover.

Moreover, even as descriptive Psychology, this Logic
would be defective. It would either have to ignore the
' willing ' and * feeling ' indubitably present in cognition, or
to insist on describing them, as far as its purposes required.
In the former case it would be certain, in the latter it
would be probable, that the description would be incom-
plete. For the descriptive interest would be restricted
by the logical purpose, and in any case, would not extend
to the whole psychical context.

But surely, when we describe, we should try to describe
completely, without obliterating psychical values and with-
out any arriere pensee. The omission of any feature
which de facto accompanies knowing demands caution
and an explicit justification. For how can it be taken
for granted that anything is unessential ? The context

102 STUDIES IN HUMANISM m

of any reasoning extends indefinitely into the psycho-
logical : the actual meaning always depends upon the
context, and when we abstract from any of it, we take
a risk. Before any train of thought is capable of logical
analysis, it must somehow be determined what features
in it are important and vital, and what unimportant and
unessential. But how can the logician determine this,
without the aid either of Psychology or of experience ?
There is no prospect then that his descriptions will be
adequate, either logically or psychologically.

Even though, therefore, some one should suggest as a
compromise that Logic and Psychology should both de-
scribe the actual psychic process, but that Logic should
have a monopoly of the cognitive features, the compro-
mise would be equally futile and intolerable. For if so,
who or what is to decide which is which, and how
much of the whole is logically relevant ? What if
the parties disagree, and the subjects decline to be
separated ?

Finally, in assigning to Logic a descriptive function,
a serious concealment has been practised. Its study of
cognitive process assuredly was not ' unprejudiced.' It
has made de facto, but secretly and unconsciously, very
definite and peculiar assumptions as to the nature of the
logical standpoint. A big encroachment has been made
on the domain of Psychology, which has been robbed of
the most valuable portion of its territory. It has been
assumed (as we saw in § 4) that Psychology has no right
to treat cognitive values, and must perforce content itself
with what is left over after Logic has claimed all it has
a mind to for its province. And this despoliation has
been committed by sheer importunity, without the least
pretence of a rational delimitation of scientific frontiers,
and with no attempt at an equitable arbitration of the
dispute !

§ 15. The results of this monstrous injustice are not
slow to show themselves. First of all, Psychology is
reduced to absurdity, to the care of the shreds and dregs
of a disrupted soul. And then, by a thoroughly deserved

m LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 103

Nemesis, the unjust abstraction made by Logic ends in
her own paralysis !

The first stage of this process, the arbitrary stultifica-
tion of Psychology, may best be studied in Prof.
Bosanquet's Aristotelian Society papers ; ^ the second, the
suicide of ' independent ' Logic, in Mr. H, H. Joachim's
book. The Nature of Truth.

" Psychological process," says Prof. Bosanquet, " when
it differs from the process which is the object-matter of
logic, differs by being inarticulate, circuitous, fragmentary.
It is the logical process broken up and disguised," " a
Glaucus," whose divine original, however, is " never found
typically perfect in actual psychological process." " Thus
" logical process is the psychological process in its
explicit and self-consistent form," freed from the " in-
terruptions " and " irrelevance " of " purely psychical
disturbances."

And so the ' self-normative,' ' independent ' Logic,
" dropping out abstract psychical processes," haughtily
" goes forward on the path of concrete fulfilment or
individuality"^ — to what end will presently appear.

Now the division of territories propounded in these
words should certainly secure to Logic the most
brilliantly prosperous career. It appears to give Logic
every advantage. It reduces Psychology to such pulp
that its voice can scarce be heard in the Council of the
Sciences. One hardly dares to point out in remonstrance
that Prof. Bosanquet's " psychological process " with
*' pure " and '* mere " conditions differs radically from the
concrete psychical process of Humanist Psychology, and
is obviously incapable of performing the functions of the
latter. It is conceived as a miserable abstraction, not (as
is legitimate in a special science) as regards limitation of
standpoint, but as regards the content it is permitted to
treat, and is almost deserving of the contempt poured
upon it. For what is it but a mere rubbishy residuum,
all that is left behind when its values have been ex-

1 L.c. pp. 237-47, 262-5.
2 L.c. pp. 239, 240. ^ L.c. p. 265.

104 STUDIES IN HUMANISM m

tracted from the actual psychic process, and its life has
been extinguished ?

Compared with this " misshapen Glaucus " postulated
by logical theory, almost anything may claim to be
concrete. Even Prof. Bosanquet's ' logic-process,' which
has been allowed to select all that seemed to be of value,
and to abstract only from the merest and most worthless
dross. So at least it seems, in the triumphant self-
assertion of an ' independent ' Logic. It seems almost
fantastic to suggest a doubt whether after all ' Psychology '
has been despoiled enough, whether after assigning to
the ' logical ' the whole purposiveness of psychic process
and leaving the psychological a purposeless chaos, Prof.
Bosanquet has not abstracted from something which was
needed to make thought truly purposive.

§ 1 6. Meanwhile, what can we reply ? Nothing, it is to
be feared, our intellectualist logicians will deign to listen to.

We shall protest in vain that the ' mere ' or ' pure '
psychological conditions, which Prof. Bosanquet flung
aside as worthless on the rubbish heap, are pure fictions
which bear no resemblance to the psychical processes of
actual knowing, that we never meant to relate them to
Logic, that what we meant was not this fantastic
abstraction, but the most concrete thing imaginable,
viz. the actual psychic process in its all-inclusive activity,
and with nothing at all, however worthless it might seem,
abstracted from. We shall observe in vain that however
* concrete ' the logic-process may appear by comparison
with the artificial abstraction of the ' merely psychological,'
it is admitted to be an ideal never realized in actual
thinking, that therefore it has abstracted from something,
and that it remains to be seen whether that was really
as unessential as was asserted, or whether an immense
abstraction has unwittingly been made, which in the end
proves ruinous to Logic. We shall ask in vain how
Logic has arrived at a standpoint which gives it such
crushing superiority over Psychology, and entitles it to
take and leave whatsoever it likes, without condescending
to give reasons for its procedure.

m LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 105

We shall ask all these questions vainly, because Logic
is ' independent,' nay autocratic. It gives an account of
its self-normative procedure to no man or science. " It
can only be judged by itself at a further stage," its friends
haughtily declare.^ We must therefore perforce let it go
its own way. It cannot be refuted ; it can only be
developed.

§ 17. Let us therefore follow the developments of
' Logic' Having successfully maintained her right to
' depersonalize ' herself, having got rid of the ' merely
psychological ' encumbrances of her ' Glaucus,' her ' old
man of the sea,' she should be able to soar to the illimit-
able heights of an infinite ' ideal ' of a " timelessly self-ful-
filled," " all-inclusive, significant whole," " whose coherence
is perfect truth." ^ She proceeds to do so, until only
our deep-seated British respect for what we cannot under-
stand hinders us from declaring that in her Hegelian
disguise she has become wholly unintelligible, and that
clouds of German metaphysics have rendered her invisible
in her ascension.

But just as we had despaired of ever seeing her again,
to our amazement there ensues a catastrophe which brings
her back to earth with more than Icarian suddenness, and
in as completely shattered a condition.

There was an error in her calculations which has
brought about her fall. Or rather Error was not taken
into her calculations, when she assumed her standpoint,
discarded the merely human as ' merely psychological,'
and constructed her ideal. ' The Ideal ' does not admit
of Error : and yet on earth Error impudently takes
the liberty to exist. It is, of course, a mere illusion,
but its persistent phantom yields not to the exorcisms of
Logic.

The situation must be set forth in the words of one
who has seen the vision, and suffered its denoiiment : our
own would be suspect and inadequate.^ " The confused

^ Prof. Bosariquet {/.c. p. 265).

^ H. H. Joachim, The Nature of Truth, pp. 169-170 and /a^j2;«.

^ Ibid. pp. 167-8. For further selections see Essay vi., especially §§ 2, 3.

io6 STUDIES IN HUMANISM m

mass of idiosyncrasies," we are told, which are " my and
your thinking, my and your ' self,' the particular temporal
processes, and the extreme self-substantiation of the
finite ' modes,' which is error in its full discordance : these
are incidents somehow connected with the known truth,
but they themselves, and the manner of their connexion, are
excluded from the theory of knowledge"^ which "must rule
out as irrelevant some — perhaps most, but certainly not
all — of the temporal and finite conditions under which
truth is known." " Truth, beauty, and goodness " (for all
the ideals as conceived by intellectualism must break
down in the same way when they try to transcend their
reference to man) " are timeless, universal, independent
structures ; and yet it is also essential to them to be
manifested in the thinking of finite subjects, in the actions
and volitions of perishing agents." ^ Hence Error is
" unthinkable," " a declaration of independence, where
that which declares is nothing real, and nothing real is
declared." '

But why should not ' Logic ' free herself from these
embarrassments by cutting the last thin thread that
attaches her to an earthly existence and a human function
which are infested with ' merely psychological ' accidents
and idiosyncrasies, and vitiated by the errors of human
beings of which she ought surely to have divested herself
when she proceeded to 'depersonalize' herself? Why do
these human trappings cling, like a shirt of Nessus, to
the naked Truth ? Can it be that ' Logic ' could not
' depersonalize ' herself completely, nay, that her effort
was a sheer delusion ?

Mr. Joachim makes answer.^ Logic " must render
intelligible the dual nature of human experience. ... It
must show how the complete coherence, which is perfect
truth, involves as a necessary ' moment ' in its self-
maintenance the self-assertion of the finite modal minds :
a self-assertion which in its extreme form is Error. It
must reconcile this self-assertive independence with the

^ Italics mine, cp. p. i68 «. 2. ^ L.c. p. 163.

^ L.c. pp. 170-1.

Ill LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 107

modal dependence of the self-asserting minds. . . . Other-
wise human knowledge remains, for all we can tell, un-
related to ideal experience." ^

In other words, when ' Logic ' commenced her
nuptial flight towards ' the Ideal,' she quite forgot that
after all human forces raised her, that all her beaute-
ous visions were conceived by the eye of human minds,
and that she has repaid our devotion by disavowing her
creators.

The natural result is sheer, unmitigated, inevitable,
and irreparable contradiction, as Mr. Joachim most
honourably recognizes. Logic is met by " demands
which both must be and cannot be completely satisfied." ^
To satisfy them completely, complete truth would have
to be manifest to itself. Whereas what we can conceive
ourselves as attaining is only complete truth manifest to
us. And as manifested in human truth the opposition of
subject and object persists ; our knowledge is always
thought about an Other : " the opposition of the thought
and its Other is apparently vital." It cannot attain to
union with its Other ; and so the significant Whole,
cleft by a self-diremption, falls into halves.^ The whole
theory, therefore, " falls short of the absolute truth mani-
fest to itself." ^ The " theory of truth, based on the
coherence-notion, is not itself true qua coherent." ^ It is
" not only de facto unaccomplished, but is impossible by
the very nature of the case." ^

And so Mr. Joachim, though he tries to soften the
effect of his idol-breaking blows for the benefit of his
friends by protesting that their common theory is " as
true as a theory can be" ^ finishes up as a sceptic malgre
lui amid the ruins of all the intellectualistic conceptions
of Logic, and of his own ' Hegelian ' metaphysic.

§ 18. Of a surety we did well to allow Logic to go on
her way, and to be " judged by herself at a further stage,"
by her " approach to completeness and comprehensive-

^ L.c. p. 172. '^ L.c. p. 171. The italics are Mr. Joachim's.

•* L.c. pp. 171-2 (in substance).

■• L.c. p. 178. •' L.c. p. 176. ^ L.c. p. 178.

io8 STUDIES IN HUMANISM m

ness." ^ Her dibdcle has certainly approached complete-
ness, and is quite comprehensible to us.

For there is nothing either new in her overthrow or
obscure in its causes.

The Hegelian theory of knowledge and reality — for
Mr. Joachim, taught perhaps by the negative outcome
of Appearance and Reality, has rightly renounced the
pretence of salving Logic by Metaphysics ^ — has broken
down completely. It has broken down precisely as it
was predicted that it must break down so soon as it was
thought out consistently and to the end,^ It has broken
down precisely as every intellectualistic conception of
Logic has always broken down, at precisely the same
point and for precisely the same reasons. It has not
failed, assuredly, for any lack of ingenuity or perseverance
in its advocates, who have left no stone unturned to save
a hopeless situation, and could no doubt with ease have
lifted the burden of Sisyphus to the summit of any hill of
hell. But their labour was more than Sisyphean : they
had, unfortunately, committed ' Logic ' to a fundamental
blunder. It has wilfully, wantonly, and of malice
prepense abstracted from humanity. Instead of con-
ceiving God as incarnating himself in man, it has sought
God by disavowing and belittling man. And as a reward
it has itself been terrified to death by an incredible
monster — the creature of its own unhealthy nightmare !

In other words, it has fallen into a '^wpiafi6<;, a fatal
separation between the human and the ideal which
renders both unmeaning, but was rendered inevitable
and irretrievable by its presuppositions as to the value
of human psychology. Once our psychic processes are
denied logical value and excluded from the nature of
truth, we are playing with abstractions, even though we
may not realize this until at the end our ' Ideal ' is
required to find room for our errors. Once we exalt the
limited and relative, and merely ' pragmatic,' * independ-
ence ' of truth, which remains safely immanent within the

^ Arist. Soc. Proc. 1906, p. 265. - Cp. Essay iv. § 3.

^ Cp. Humanism, p. 48.

in LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 109

sphere of human valuations and can always be withdrawn
and modified as our needs and purposes require, into an
absolute and infinite ' independence ' which entirely tran-
scends our human experience, we have ascribed to truth
the ' dual nature,' which so perplexes Mr. Joachim, and
can by no device be unified. For a dualistic chasm has
been constructed between the human and ' psychological,'
and the ideal and ' logical.' No real relation can be
established between them ; all attempts at connecting
them break down so soon as they are tested. Nor can
any real theoretic progress be made. The utmost
ingenuity only brings ' logicians ' to the brink of the
chasm. And that is ' nearer ' to the other side only in
an illusory fashion. It remains only to postulate a re-
conciliation of the discrepant halves of a knowledge which
is rent asunder from top to bottom, by a supreme and
mystic act of faith.^ But as the jejune rationalism of the
theory in question had previously prohibited all acts of
faith, it has manifestly fallen into a pit of its own digging.

Or shall we rather say, of Plato's ? - For he it was
that first led the way into the pit into which, with a few
despised exceptions, the whole company of philosophers
has followed him, as patiently and submissively as a
flock of sheep follows its bell-wether, and out of which no
one has been able, and not too many have even tried, to
escape.

Throughout the Theaetetus, for example, Plato has
made the assumptions that * knowledge ' is of * universals '
and not concerned or connected with the fleeting and
variable judgments of individual men about their personal
experience, that thought and sense-perception are anti-
thetical and hostile, that the logical concept is something
wholly superior to and independent of the psychical
process {e.g. 152 d), and that the Protagorean suggestion,
to start the theory of knowing from the actual knowing
of the individual's perceptions is a proposal for the
abolition of truth. No wonder after this that it becomes for

^ Cp. The Nature of Truth, pp. 172, 177,
2 Compare the last Essay.

no STUDIES IN HUMANISM m

him a serious ' contradiction ' when A judges to be warm
what B judges to be cold, seeing that 'it' cannot be both.
But ' it ' does not exist out of relation to the divergent
judgments : ' it ' stands in this case for the problem of
constructing a ' common ' perception ; if the two ' its ' are
to be brought together into an 'objective' scheme of
temperature, A and B must set to work to construct a
thermometer, as to the readings of which they can agree.^
Plato, therefore, has merely debarred himself from under-
standing the de facto genesis and development of our
common world of subjective intercourse,and by starting with
abstraction from the personal character of both judgments,
he has manufactured a fallacious contradiction. Can we
wonder after this that the Platonic theory of knowledge
remains plunged in unmitigated dualism, and that in the
end it has to be admitted (209) that 'knowledge' can
never condescend to the particular and personal, and is
unable to discriminate between Theaetetus and Socrates ?
For was it not pledged, ex vi defnitionis, to leave
out whatever part of reality concerns a ' this^ ' here^^
and * now ' ? But instead of inferring from this im-
potence, and from the self-abnegation of an ' ideal ' of
knowledge which is not even ideally adequate, because it
renounces the duty of knowing the individual perfectly
in its uniqueness^ that there must be a radical flaw in a
conception of knowledge which has led to this absurdity,
what does Plato do ? He proclaims the Sensible un-
knowable and unintelligible as such, attributes to all
* phenomenal ' reality an all-pervasive taint of ' Not-being,'
and retains his Ideal Theory though well aware that it
cannot cross the gulf between the truly Real and the
Sensible ! ^ How very human are even the greatest of
philosophers !

It would never, therefore, occur to us to be surprised
that not only should the Theaetetus in the end leave the
problem of error unsolved and confess to utter inability
to say what knowledge is, but that the whole Platonic

1 Cp. pp. 315-20. ^ Cp. Humanism, p. 126.

^ Essay ii. § 14-16.

Ill

LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY iii

theory of knowledge should remain immersed in obscurity
and contradiction. But one thing is clear, viz. that who-
ever had learnt the lesson of the Theaetetus could have
predicted the failure of all intellectualistic epistemologies
down to The Nature of TrutJi.

§ 19. And the remedy for this sceptical paralysis of
Intellectualism ? It is simple — so simple that it will be
hard to get philosophers to look at it. But it cuts very
deep. It demands a complete reversal of inveterate
assumptions, and a re -establishment of Logic on very
different foundations. We have merely to refrain from
the twin abstractions which every intellectualistic logic
makes, and which must, if carried through consistently,
prove fatal to its very existence. These two assumptions,
which have troubled us throughout, may now be called
(i) the etherealizing, and (2) the depersonalizing oi iruth.,
and together they effect the complete dehumanizing of
knowledge.

(i) By the etJierealizing of truth is meant the abstrac-
tion from the actual use and verification of an assertion,
which is made in assuming that its truth is independent
of its application. This really destroys its whole signi-
ficance, although at first it seems to leave its ' truth ' a
matter of self-consistency and intrinsic ' coherence.' But
if we try to take truth in this purely formal way, we
identify truth with claim to truth,^ and render the testing
of claims extralogical. And it is then discovered that all
reference to reality has been excluded,^ that ' self-con-
sistency' means nothing but a juggle with words whose
meanings are presumed to be perfect and stable in their
truth, and that the distinction between truth and error
has become incomprehensible. Error (as contrasted with
self-contradiction, which destroys the meaning wholly)
is nothing inherent in the form of the judgment, but lies
in a failure of its application. It is a failure of our

' Cp. Essay v.

2 It is characteristic of intellectualist ' logic ' not to have noticed the dis-
crepancy between its two assertions (i) that ' truth ' is wholly a matter of the
intrinsic ' self-consistency ' of its ' ideal,' and independent of all ' consequences ' ;
and (2) that all judgment involves a ' reference to reality ' beyond itself.

112 STUDIES IN HUMANISM m

thought to attain its object. And as our conception of
' truth ' is determined by its contrast with error, to
abstract from error is really to abstract from ' truth.'
Hence a Logic which abstracts from error implicitly
despairs also of giving an intelligible account of truth.
It ceases at any rate to be a theory of real knowledge,
and the formal ' truth,' the semblance of meaning, which
it verbally retains, no longer possesses relevance to human
knowing.

(2) But the depersonalizing of truth deprives the Logic
of Intellectualism even of this show of meaning. It
makes abstraction from the meaning actually intended,
from the purpose of the meaner. Now as every judgment
is prompted and kept together by a purpose which forms
the uniting bond between its subject and its predicate,
tJie purpose is logically vital. It is also a concrete fact of
an intensely personal kind, which ramifies indefinitely
into human psychology. Hence it is often logically in-
convenient, as complicating the situation beyond the
powers of formal analysis. But to abstract from it,
wholly and systematically, is to disintegrate the judgment.
To do this destroys its intrinsic coherence, as well as its
reference to real truth. It amounts to a complete annihila-
tion of meaning.

It is difficult to suppose, therefore, that when in-
tellectualist Logic fully realizes the situation to which
its abstractions lead, it will continue to presume without
trial that the full concreteness of psychic process is
logical irrelevance, and that man is a negligible quantity
in the formation of truth.

A reformed and rehumanized Logic, on the other
hand, will flatly refuse to immolate all human knowledge,
all fact, and all reality to intellectualist prejudices. It will
conceive and value the old abstractions merely as instru-
ments, as methodological simplifications, which may be
freely used, so long as the limits of their usefulness are
not overlooked, and their authority is not made absolute.

And here will be the rub. For these abstractions
have been misconceived so long ! It is such a time-

m LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY 113

honoured custom with philosophers to believe that ' uni-
versals ' are loftier and more sacred than * particulars,'
that their formation is not to be inquired into nor tested,
that their value is wholly independent of their application,
that they would subsist in unsullied excellence and
truth, even though they never were, nor could be, used.
It will take, therefore, generations for philosophers to
convince themselves that the essential function of uni-
versals is to apply to particulars^ that they are actually
true only because, and when, they are used, that when
they become inapplicable they become unmeaning, that
their abstraction, therefore, from time, place, and in-
dividuality is only superficial and illusory, and that in
short they are instruments for the control and improve-
ment of human experience.

' But will not the attempt to build knowledge on so
untried and paradoxical a basis be fraught with un-
suspected difficulties, and in its turn conduct us back to
scepticism ? Is it credible that so many generations of
thinkers can have been mistaken in acquiescing in the
unproved assertion of the good man, Plato, that Prota-
goreanism necessitates scepticism ?

In view of the outcome of intellectualistic ' Logic,'
this menace of scepticism seems a grotesque impertinence,
and it might be well to retort that even an untried basis
was better than one which had been tried and found
to be so self-destructive. But the threat has been
used so often that it will hardly be relinquished all at
once : so we had better face it. It is a mere bogey — a
Chimaera summoned from the House of Hades to scare us
back into the Labyrinth of the Minotaur. No proof has
ever been vouchsafed of its contention. And seeing that
Plato's genius has failed so signally to refute Protagoras,
we may await with equanimity the advent of a greater
man than Plato to confute the inherent Humanism of
man's thought.

(3^

IV
TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY^

ARGUMENT

§ I. Mr. Bradley's attack on Humanism in spite of, § 2, the hesitations in
his intellectualism. § 3. His perception of the difficulties in the
' correspondence ' view of truth. § 4. Pragmatism as the way to
avoid logical scepticism. § 5. Mr. Bradley rejects this way and
prefers to stay in 'Jericho.' § 6. The total irrelevance of his criti-
cism. § 7. His reversion to the ' correspondence ' view, and its diffi-
culties, which coincide with those of realism. The inability of Abso-
lutism to disavow it. § 8. Mr. Bradley's troubles with the relations
of ' truth ' and ' fact,' and with the subjective activity in the appre-
hension of 'fact.' The 'double nature of truth.' § 9. The antithesis
of 'practice' and 'theory.' What does the 'independence' of theory
mean? § 10. Humanism as overcoming this antithesis and unifying
life in voluntarist terms. The advantages of voluntaristic descriptions.
§ II. Mr. Bradley's definition of 'practice.' § 12. His failure to
distinguish between axioms and postulates. § 13. His intellectualistic
conceptions of 'will.' § 14. His summary of his objections. § 15.
His attempt to raise the odium theologicum. § 16. His relapse into
agnosticism. § 17. His concessions. § 18. His preference for a
difficult philosophy.

§ I. Mr. F. H. Bradley's characteristic paper on
"Truth and Practice" in the July 1904 number of
Mind{yo\. xiii. N.S. No. 51) must be regarded as the most
significant, though hardly the most valuable, of the hostile
criticisms which the Humanist movement has so far en-

^ The substance of this paper appeared as a reply to Mr. Bradley in Mind,
vol. xiii. N.S. No. 52 (October 1904). It has, however, been considerably altered,
partly by the excision of matters of ephemeral and merely personal interest, partly
by some expansion of the argument. Mr. Bradley, as might have been expected,
did not reply. Other comments on the shifting phases of his struggle to save his
absolutism from absorption in scepticism on the one side and pragmatism on the
other, will be found in Mind, Nos. 63, 67, 73, 76. In the end Mr. Bradley has
to confess that his 'philosophy,' i.e. his particular amalgamation of a dogmatic
absolutism corroded by scepticism and saved from annihilation by an appeal to
pragmatism as a ' practical makeshift,' is just his personal preference, which need
not appear rational to any one else.

114

IV TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY 115

countered. For Mr. Bradley is an acknowledged leader of
the sect of absolutists which has long dominated philosophic
instruction in this country, and is incomparably the most
brilliant and formidable of its champions. Ever since he
made his debut a quarter of a century ago by triumphantly
dragging the corpse of Mill round the beleaguered strong-
hold of British philosophy, he has exercised a reign of
terror based on an unsparing use of epigrams and sarcastic
footnotes, " more polished than polite," as Prof. Hoernle
wittily remarks.^ He has shown also that however
much he may despise personalities in his monistic meta-
physics, he yet loves them like a pluralist in his polemics.
§ 2. And yet until this paper appeared, it was quite open
to doubt what attitude Mr. Bradley would assume towards
the new philosophic movement. It was open to him to
disarm revolt by judicious concession, nay to put himself at
the head of it, by developing ideas not obscurely implicit
in his own writings. It was by no means self-evident that
he must utterly condemn even a systematic protest against
intellectualism. For though Mr. Bradley no doubt
seemed in the end to come down on the intellectualist
side of the fence, the reason plainly seemed to be that he
had not subjected the notions with which he stopped, those
of the ' intellect ' and its ' satisfaction,' to stringent scrutiny.
And it was evident that his intellectualism had not
desiccated his soul, nor did it seem so deeply ingrained, or
of so extreme and naive a type, as that of his more
rigidly ' Hegelian ' allies. Nay, it seemed at times to
have been only by a distinctly wilful fiat that he had
arrested himself on the path to pragmatism, as, for
example, in Appearance and Reality^ p. 154. Even the
final intellectualism of his description of the false as ' the
theoretically untenable ' and of the aim of philosophy
as ' the satisfaction of the intellect,' might have easily
been mitigated into harmony with the Humanist view by
shifting the emphasis from the ' intellect ' to the ' satis-
faction^ and by adopting a pragmatic interpretation of
the ' intellect's ' structure and of its ' theoretic ' functioning.

^ Mind, N.S. No. 55, p. 332.

ii6 STUDIES IN HUMANISM iv

§ 3. Again, from the position Mr. Bradley had reached
at the end of his Principles of Logic^ a pragmatic Logic
might well have seemed the promised land. Students of
that brilliant and entertaining work will doubtless re-
member that the situation Mr. Bradley finally found
himself in was one of logical scepticism tempered by
prophetic allusions to a not yet extant metaphysic. This
plight, however, cannot be said to have been mended
when his Appearance and Reality ended in a far more
complete scepticism, tempered only by the postulation of
an unknowable Absolute invoked to set all things right
* somehow.'

Yet this whole perplexity arose from a very simple
cause. His examination of the function of our thought
had irresistibly pointed to the conclusion that knowing,
in very many, if not all, cases involves an arbitrary mani-
pulation (' mutilation ') of the presented data. Hence if
it was assumed that the business of thought was funda-
mentally to * copy ' reality, it was clear that thought was
a failure. It did not ' copy ' ; it abstracted, it selected, it
mutilated, it recombined, it postulated — all in what seemed
a thoroughly arbitrary manner.^ If, therefore, truth
meant * correspondence with reality,' it seemed plain that
inference as such was invalid, and truth unattainable.
Nowhere could Mr. Bradley discover a case where *' the
truth of the consequence does not rest upon our interfer-
ence " with the data. In vain he clings to the possibility
that " though the function of concluding depends upon my
intellect, the content concluded may be wholly unhelped,
untouched, and self- developed." " This possibility is
clearly preposterous, even though it is guaranteed by
' logical postulates ' which have constantly to be invoked.
" Rightly or wrongly," we are told, "logic assumes that a
mere attention, a simple {sic!) retaining and holding
together before the mind's eye, is not an alteration," and
" we are forced to assume that some processes do not
modify their consequence," ^ and that " some operations do

^ Princ. of Logic, pp. 500-10. ' L.c. p. 502.

■* L.c. p. 506.

IV TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY 117

but change our power of perceiving the subject and leave
the subject itself unaltered . . . even where our wilful
and arbitrary choice selects the process and procures the
result," ^ But, as we saw, these logical postulates
were then consigned to metaphysics, and finally entered
that cave of the Absolute whence no ' finite ' truths ever
issue forth again.

In short the ' correspondence -with -reality ' view of
truth is ' riddled with contradictions * in the conclud-
ing chapters of Mr. Bradley's Logic, and driven to
seek refuge in an arbitrary ' postulate,' to be hereafter
established by metaphysics. This feat his metaphysic
fails to accomplish : but it solaces the wounds of Logic
by riddling everything else with contradictions too.

§ 4. Yet the remedy was close at hand. Mr. Bradley
had merely to grasp his nettle firmly, to take his bull
by the horns, to sit down on his praying carpet, in order to
effect a magical transformation of the whole situation, in
the simplest and most satisfying way ! He remarks : ** in
A — B, B — C, the identity of B is the bond of the construc-
tion. If I viade that identity, I should certainly in that
case have manufactured the consequence. And it may be
contended that it lies in my choice to see or to be blind,
and that hence my recognition does make what it per-
ceives. Against such a contention I can here attempt no
further answer. I must simply fall back on the logical
postulate, and leave further discussion to metaphysics." ^

But now suppose that instead of ' falling back * he had
gone on boldly and stayed in logic ? Suppose he had
followed the indications of logic and accepted the omens }
Suppose he had allowed himself to see that we make
the identity always and everywhere, that selection and
voluntary manipulation are of the essence of all cognitive
process, and that even our most ' passive ' reception of
sensory stimuli is at bottom selective, because it ignores
a multitude of other processes in nature, and volitionally

^ L.c. p. 518, where too Mr. Bradley catches a glimpse of the dependence of
' truth ' on possibility of application (§ 24).
2 L.c. p. 502.

ii8 STUDIES IN HUMANISM iv

so, because determined by the organism's choice of life, by
the way in which its * will to live ' has moulded it ?

If Mr. Bradley had been willing to do this, to say
(with me) that logical identity is always made, being a
great postulate, by means of which we successfully operate
upon our experience,^ he would have passed easily and
naturally on to the pragmatic view of truth and of the
nature of logic. If in all thinking identities are ' made,'
then this normal procedure cannot possibly be made a
reproach to thought. If ' truth ' means successful opera-
tion on * reality,' then reasoning cannot be invalidated so
long as it is successful. If thought has not to 'correspond'
or ' copy,' but to be efficacious, then it need not be despised
for failing to do what it was not concerned to do. In
short the theory of knowledge is out of the wood.^

§ 5. What, then, prevented Mr. Bradley from perceiving
all this ? So far as one can see, nothing but sheer pre-
judice. He simply will not allow practical success to
validate a cognitive process. He will not let us " plead
that because logic works, logic cannot be wrong." ^ But
at the time when he wrote the Logic, Mr. Bradley was
still far from " a blind acquiescence in the coarsest
prejudices of popular (i.e. intellectualisf) thought,"^ and
it night well seem possible that he would determine to
advance instead of retrograding, and hopelessly miring
himself in the slough of scepticism.

Unfortunately Mr. Bradley has chosen otherwise. He
has preferred to revert to the correspondence view of
truth, of which he had formerly so clearly exposed the
absurdities.'' So when the princes of Moab tempted
him, he went and cursed the newcomers with a vehemence
which must have well-nigh exhausted the resources even
of his vocabulary, perhaps because none of his faithful
followers dared to open their mouths to utter a word of

^ Personal Idealism, pp. 103-4. Formal Logic, ch. x. § 10.

2 Cp. Mr. Start's criticism of these notions of Mr. Bradley's in Idola Theatri,
pp. 291-2.

3 L.c. p. 531. " L.c. p. 534-

^ Mind, N.S. No. 51. P. 311, " If my idea is to work, it must correspond to
a determinate being it cannot be said to make." P. 312, " Tiie whole of this is
fact to which my idea has got first to correspond. "

IV TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY 119

warning. He has chosen to conceive the philosophic con-
troversy of the day as a mere raid by a horde of vagrant
nomads upon the citadel of Absolutism, and mingled
wit with venom in his own inimitable way when he
declares, " I forget before how many blasts of the trumpet
the walls of Jericho fell, but the number, I should judge,
has already been much exceeded. The walls of Jericho,
so far as I can see, have no intention of moving, and the
dwellers in Jericho tend irreverently to regard the sound
as the well-known noise which comes from the setters
forth of new pills or plasters." ^

One knows of course what is the controversial meaning
of abusing the plaintiff's attorney, but our appreciation of
Mr. Bradley's fun should not deter us, either from regret-
ting his retrogression, or from welcoming his simile. We
all remember what happened to the walls of Jericho, and
so can value Mr. Bradley's testimony to the ' jerry-built '
character of the defences he has done so much to raise.^
Let us therefore accept the omen and proceed to consider
the objections which Mr. Bradley seems to think im-
portant.

§ 6. Mr. Bradley boldly begins with an avowal that he
has so far failed to understand the new philosophy.^ This
did not seem a very credible or promising premiss for a
critic of Mr, Bradley's calibre to set out from, but long
before I had finished reading I found myself entirely in
agreement with him. What he had failed to understand,
that is, or perhaps, as Prof. James suggested,* had not
sought to understand, was the doctrine I had maintained ;

1 L.c. p. 330.

2 It may be worth noting that this probably indicates the real derivation of
the word. ' Jerry-built ' = ' Jericho-built. ' The mythical ' Jerry and Co. ' probably
arose by ' tmesis ' from Jeri-cho, and the term thus embodies a jocular ration-
alizing of the recorded miracle.

* In his controversial methods this does not preclude a subsequent claim to
understand it much better than its author, who, he informs us, with marvellous,
but too evidently telepathic, insight ' ' has made no attempt ^ to realize the true
meaning of his own doctrine" (pp. 322, 333). Afterwards he reaffirms his
inability to understand (p. 329), which finally (p. 335), with the agnosticism
which seems to be the natural reaction from pretensions to absolute knowledge,
extends itself to all things !

* Mind, N.S. No. 52, p. 458.

1 The italics (mine) indicate the point misapprehended.

120 STUDIES IN HUMANISM iv

what he had refuted with much superfluous subtlety was
a mass of misconceptions which he had developed into
misrepresentations, and finally distorted into absurdities
entirely irrelevant to my position. Now if anything I
had written had fairly lent itself to such interpretations,
I should feel duly contrite, and would gladly remove the
occasion for them. It is, however, difficult to see how the
text of any of my essays anywhere lends itself to any of
Mr. Bradley's interpretations, and in the absence of
precise references to it, it seems impossible even to con-
jecture what occasioned them.

Where, if point-blank questions may be put, has Mr,
Bradley ever found it stated that ' no object counts for
any more than a worthless means ^ [! how can a worthless
means be a means at all ?] to one's own mere ^ activity,'
or that ' truth consists in the mere ^ practical working of
an idea,' or that ' the words true and false have not a
specific meaning,' or that ' truth everywhere subserves
practice directly ^ ^ or that ' the entire ^ nature of the situa-
tion is first made by the idea,' or that an idea's ' agreement
or discord with fact other than my will can be excluded,'
or that * the entire ^ truth is made by my end and my
ideas ' and is ' a mere ^ deed,' or ' a means to a foreign -^
end ' or ' merely ^ what happens to prevail ' ? I do not
ask, Men entendu^ for literal quotations in support of these
allegations (for I know these do not exist), but even for
passages which can legitimately be said to countenance
them, and meanwhile must question whether Mr. Bradley
has at all entered into the pragmatist conception of the
' making ' of ' truth ' and * reality.' Else he would hardly
have wholly ignored or dismissed as unessential ^ such
cardinal doctrines as the presence of limiting conditions in
each experiment and the voluntary acceptance ^ of a basis

^ The italics (mine) indicate the points misapprehended.

"^ Especially Personal Idealism, pp. 54-63 and 95, and Humanism, pp. 12,
55-60. Indeed one would not suppose that he had read beyond the Preface in
the latter work, but for his strange manipulation of the former.

2 I am gratified to find the importance of this in the recognition of ' fact ' so
strongly emphasized by Prof. Royce in his valuable paper on "The Eternal and
the Practical" {Phil. Rev. for March 1904). Strictly, nothing further is needed
to establish the pragmatic view of ' fact. '

IV TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY 121

taken as factual, the distinction of postulate and axiom,
the selection and verification of postulates by subsequent
experience, and the psychological and social criticism
which inevitably purifies the passing wishes of the indi-
vidual.

Now controversially nothing is more embarrassing than
a criticism which is totally irrelevant. Absolute irrelevance
induces a sort of dazed feeling in its victim, who thinks
that his inability to see the application must be due to his
own lack of intelligence, especially when it is accompanied
by an air of condescension, and a careful avoidance of
references. To meet it one must either restate one's own
position,^ or criticize the critic.

In this case I should have been only too glad to show
more explicitly what is actually the contention of Human-
ism regarding the conception of ' truth ' and its relation
to ' fact,' and how exactly it disposes of Mr. Bradley's
difficulties, and achieves what hitherto all idealisms have
attempted in vain, viz. the abolishing of the dualisms of
' truth ' and * fact ' and ' fact ' and ' value.' In view,
however, of my critic's reluctance to consider the new
doctrines in their connexion, I feel constrained to devote
my energies chiefly to showing critically that, whether we
are right or wrong, the old doctrine at all events cannot
stand.

§ 7. I must observe, therefore, that even Mr. Bradley
can state nothing tenable or coherent on either of the
points alluded to. As regards the conception of ' truth,' he
seems only just to have realized that there is a question as
to the ' specific meaning ' of the attributions ' true ' and
' false ' (p. 31 1).^ But he excuses himself from telling us
what he takes it to be ! Surely so long as our critics
have no positive conception of what the predication of
truth means, their criticisms have no real locus standi.

On the relation of ' Truth ' and ' Fact ' he is somewhat
more explicit. But he has not realized how deadly a
blow at Absolutism Prof Dewey has dealt by his admir-
able proof of the superfluity of an absolute truth-to-be-

' Cp. for this Essays xviii. and xix. ^ Cp. p. 144.

122 STUDIES IN HUMANISM iv

copied, existing alongside of the human truth which is
made by our efforts.^ Its peculiar deadliness is due to
the fact that the absolute idealist can hardly disavow a
contention with which he himself is wont to ply the
realist, viz. that an existent beyond human knowledge,
which does nothing to explain that knowledge, is invalid,
alike whether it is called an ' independent ' reality or an
' absolute * truth. The fact is that this fundamental
difficulty in absolutism and realism is the same. In
both cases our knowing has to be related to something
which transcends it and claims to be ' independent ' of it
and unaffected by it, through the very process of our
knowing ; and the ' correspondence '-notion is merely a
verbal cover for this crux. It cannot, therefore, be really
and wholly discarded. In the last resort human truth
must still be conceived as ' corresponding ' to absolute
truth, whatever obscurities and absurdities this may
involve. It is only when we interpret the transcendence
pragmatically that we perceive the nullity of the problem,
because the ' independent ' reality and truth are not
absolutely so, but alike conceptions immanently evolved
in human knowing, and do not therefore require to be
forced into relation with it.^ From his own point of
viev, therefore, Mr. Bradley is in a manner right in
reverting to the correspondence -with -reality view of
truth, as we saw above (p. ii8). But it is indicative
of the intellectual disintegration which Prof. Dewey's
bombshell has produced in the intellectualist camp that
most of his followers have tried to abandon it. Mr.
H. W. B. Joseph admits that " the conception of truth as
correspondence " is " a difficult notion " and " open to
criticism." ^ Prof. A. E. Taylor goes so far as to suppose
that his master has dropped it too,* while both he and
Mr. H. H. Joachim prefer to rely on the notion of

1 Mr. Bradley, who (for purposes of contrast ?) praises Prof. Dewey, also does
not seem to have noticed that something faintly like the doctrine of ' doing for
doing's sake,' which he vainly tries to fasten on me, appears to be upheld by Prof.
Dewey, so that in this important respect his form of Pragmatism would seem to
be the most radical in the field.

'^ Cp. Essays vii. § i and xx. § 2. ^ Mind, xiv. N.S. No. 53, p. 35.

* Phil. Rev. xiv. 3, p. 288.

IV TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY 123

' system,' without perceiving that the difficulty of the
' correspondence ' will then occur between the two
' systems,' ideal and human. Hence the latter, after
assuming an 'ideal' of a self-supporting systematic
coherence, finds himself face to face with the problem
of connecting it with actual human knowing. It then
turns out that the existence of error is inconsistent
with that of his ideal, and so his whole essay on The
Nature of Truth ends, avowedly, in failure. But surely
it should have been obvious from the first that the
notion of ' system ' is not only purely human but also
purely formal. It, therefore, could not be expected to
throw any light on the nature of * truth,' until means
had been devised for discriminating systematic * truth '
from systematic ' error.' Thus if Mr. Joachim had conde-
scended to start from human knowing, the problem of
error would have formed an initial obstacle and not a
final crux. These examples may serve to show that the
intellectualist theory of knowledge is as completely non-
plussed to-day by the notion of truth as Plato was when
he wrote the TJieaetetus more than 2000 years ago.^

§ 8. Mr. Bradley's embarrassments are no less painful.

(i) By retaining perforce this 'correspondence' view
he pledges himself to the assumption that Truth is
determined by Fact, by which it is ' dictated.' Fact
exists whether we will it or not, whether or not
we acknowledge it, and to it our " idea has first to
correspond" (p. 312). It has naturally to be left
obscure what part is played by the intelligence which
accepts this ' dictation,' and how the facts manage to
' dictate ' to us the ideas with which we work and which
we have to acknowledge as true, because they are thus
called for. It must not be asked how we ascertain the
nature of the eternal text, the supercelestial Koran, which
the dictation reveals ; nor yet how we are to authenticate
the correctness of the dictates we receive. For it must
clearly be ignored, that the ' facts ' we recognize are
always relative to the ' truths ' we predicate ; that of facts-

^ Cp. Essays vi. and ii. § i6.

124 STUDIES IN HUMANISM iv

in-themselves and independent of our knowledge we can
know nothing. Neither must we ask whether these
imagined facts in their own right are correctly ' repre-
sented ' by the facts as we take them to be.

(2) But these difficulties are old, and ought to be
familiar to all but the naivest realism, of which Mr.
Bradley's language here grows strangely redolent.^ Let
us pass, therefore, to a still more perplexing subject,
Mr. Bradley's present handling of what puzzled him
before, viz. the subjective activity in the apprehension of
'fact.' For 'truth,' it seems, is after all not mere re-
production of ' fact ' : the * right ' idea is not merely
'dictated,' it has also to be 'chosen' (p. 311). How
then, we ask, can this hapless Truth serve two such
different masters ? How can it on the one hand adjust
itself to human demands and interests, and yet on the
other slavishly copy and respectfully reproduce a con-
genitally ' outer,' and already pre-existing, ' fact ' ? No
' logical postulate ' is invoked to perform this unparal-
leled feat, but at times this subjective influence which
goes to the making of ' Truth ' is called merely a
cong^ delire (p. 312), z>. a formality, presumably, which
is not held seriously to impair the dependence of truth
upor. an already determinate ' fact.' Yet in the same
breath a 'selection' is mentioned. If this is notto involve
volitional preference and acceptance, what can it mean ?
Surely it is something more than a mechanical registration
of an outside ' fact ' ? Elsewhere it is admitted that our
idea " reacts and then makes the whole situation to be
different " (p. 311 ), that " truth may not be truth at all
apart from its existence in myself and in other finite
subjects, and at least very largely that existence depends
on our wills." ^ Nay, our moral ends in their turn ' dictate '
even to truth and beauty (pp. 320-1). Indeed in one
aspect at least truth is an ideal construction (pp.

324-5)-

Now what are we to make of this double nature of

^ As Prof. Hoernle also notices {Mind, xiv. p. 442, s.f.).
2 P, 320, italics mine.

IV TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY 125

Truth ? Is it not clear that if there is to be a real selec-
tion there must be real alternatives, which can be chosen ?
And is it not almost as clear that even in a ' forced '
choice such alternatives are really presented ? Even the
poor bread-and-butter fly (now extinct) that would live
only on the ' weak tea with plenty of cream in it ' which
it could not get, and consequently * always died,' exempli-
fies this. We get then this dilemma : if our * choice,'
* selection,' or ' conge d'elire ' does not affect the rigidity of
' fact,' it is an illusion which ought not even to seem to
exist, and we have certainly no right to talk about it : if,
on the other hand, there really is 'selection' (as is asserted),
will it not stultify the assumption of a rigid fact, introduce
a possibility of a^'bitrary manipulation, and lead to al-
ternative constructions of reality ? In other words, how
is a belief in a real selection compatible with the denial
of a real freedom of human choice and of a real plasticity
in reality at large ? ^

Mr. Bradley's insistence on the * determinateness ' of
being does not help us in the least. For he does not
specify whether he conceives the determination to be {a)
absolute, or ib) partial. If (a), then how is it to be altered
by our ' reaction ' ? That reaction too, indeed, must be
wholly determinate, and the ' selecting ' must be mere
illusion. If {U) the determination is only partial, it will
form the starting-point for alternative modes of operating
upon ' fact ' and alternative results. That is, * fact ' will
be plastic, and responsive to our will.

In short, a constructive conception of the relation of
Truth to Fact is nowhere to be grasped. Everywhere
Mr. Bradley's meaning seems swiftly to evaporate into
metaphor or to dissipate into ambiguity.

Not that these difficulties are likely to prove a per-
manent embarrassment. Eventually, no doubt, some
subtlety can be requisitioned from the Christological
controversies of the sixth century wherewith to reconcile
the ' divine ' with the * human ' nature in the body of
the one Truth. But at present what Mr. Joachim signi-

1 Cp. p. 392.

126 STUDIES IN HUMANISM iv

ficantly calls " the dual nature of human experience " ^
forms the rock on which the logic of Intellectualism
deliberately wrecks itself, and one cannot find that it has
anything even apparently coherent to substitute for the
pragmatist account it rejects so haughtily.

§ 9. Mr. Bradley's second point concerns the relation
of Practice to Theory. The importance of this seems to
me to be secondary, because our differences rest largely
on the connotation of terms whose meaning is somewhat
a matter of convention, and not completely settled.

I should not dream, however, of denying that the end
must be " the fullest and most harmonious development
of our being" (p. 319), and still less than this "coincides
with the largest amount of mere doing " — except in so far
as I repudiate the notion of 'mere doing'! It is grati-
fying also to find Mr. Bradley so emphatic that " every
possible side of our life is practical," that there is nothing
"to which the moral end is unable to dictate" (p. 320),
" and even truth and beauty, however independent, fall
under its sway." These dicta ought to be decisive dis-
avowals of the old-fashioned intellectualism, and it may be
conjectured that, but for lapses of inadvertence, very little
more will be heard of it.

Difficulties begin when we try to follow Mr. Bradley's
attempt nevertheless to provide for an ' independence ' of
the theoretical. What precisely does he mean by ' inde-
pendence ' ? We are told that though all the ends and
aspects of life are practical, yet in a sense they are also
not practical. There exists, it seems, an attitude of ' mere '
theory and ' mere ' apprehension, which has indeed to
demean itself by ' altering things ' and becoming ' prac-
tical,' but " so far as it remains independent " is " essen-
tially " not practice. Both truth and beauty therefore are
practical " incidentally but not in their essence " and " at
once dependent and free " (p. 320), ' free ' in their ' nature,'
dependent in their actual functioning. Whether this
claims for theoretic truth something like Kant's noumenal
freedom and phenomenal necessity it is hard to say. But

1 The Nature of Truth, pp. 163, 170, etc.

IV TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY 127

it is clearly an important article of Mr. Bradley's faith :
" we believe in short in relative freedom " and " this is
even dictated by the interest of the spiritual common-
wealth " and identified with " the independent cultivation
of any one main side of our nature" (p. 322).

Now, quite humbly and sincerely, I must here beg for
further elucidation. I cannot in the least conceive how
this semi-detached relation is possible. Evidently there
is here between us a divergent use of terms which must
breed confusion. What (i) means the antithesis of
' incident ' and ' essence ' ? And how are they related to
Aristotle's a-vix^e^rjKo^ and ovcria ? ' Essence ' is a word
which had a definite, though highly technical, meaning in
the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, but which has
now lost this, and lends itself to much looseness of
thought. It clearly does not imply to Mr. Bradley,
as it does to a pragmatist, a reference to purpose. But
I suppose it means something important. If so, why is
it not divulged? Again (2) does it not evince a serious
laxity of terminology to equate a ' relative freedom ' with
' independence ' ? It would be instructive to watch Mr.
Bradley dealing with the same equation in other contexts,
e.g. in pluralistic attempts to derive the ' unity ' of the
world.

§ 10. Whether or not Mr. Bradley sees his way to
answer these questions, it must once more be added that,
be the argument coherent internally or meaningless, it is
at all events irrelevant. It attacks a position which has
never been defended ; it fails to repel the real attack.
For it is not our intention to turn dualists, to prove that
Theory and Practice are fundamentally different, and
foreign to each other, and then to enslave Theory to
Practice, Intellect to Will. Something of the sort may
possibly be extracted from that great matrix of the most
various doctrines, the philosophy of Kant.^ But we con-

1 I do not say justly, because I am convinced that if Kant had been twenty
years younger when he attained his insight (such as it was) into the nature of
postulation, he must have rewritten his Critique of Pure Reason on pragmatist
lines. At all events he lays the foundations of Pragmatism in a remark no prag-
matist would seek to better, when he says that " all interest is ultimately practical.

128 STUDIES IN HUMANISM iv

tend rather that there can be no independence of theory
(except in popular language) and no opposition to
practice, because theory is an outgrowth of practice and
incapable of truly ' independent ' existence. And what
we try to do is to trace this latent reference to practice,
i.e. life, throughout the whole structure, and in all the
functions, of the intellect. There is no question therefore
of degrading, and still less of annihilating, the intellect,
but merely one of its reinterpretation. We deny that
properly speaking such a thing as pure or mere intellec-
tion can occur. What is loosely so called is really also
purposive thought pursuing what seems to it a desirable
end. Only in such cases the ends may be illusory, or
may appear valuable for reasons other than those which
determine their value.^ What, therefore, we have really
attempted is to overcome the antithesis of theory and
practice, and to unify human life by emphasizing the all-
pervading purposiveness of human conduct.

Such attempts at unification are not new, but they
have usually been conducted with an intellectualist bias,
and with the purpose of reducing all ' willing ' and * feel-
ing ' to cognition. And this has often been supposed to
be something magnificent and inspiring. But how is it
spiritually more elevating to say All is Thought than to
say all is Feeling or Will} The only advantage which a
voluntarist formulation of the unity of the faculties claims
over its rivals is that ' will ' is de facto conceived as in a
manner intermediate between ' thought ' and ' feeling.'
Hence it is easiest to describe all mental life in voluntarist
terms. If either of the others is taken as fundamental,
' will ' easily succumbs to an illusory ' analysis ' ; it can
be termed the strongest ' desire ' or the ' self-realization '
of ideas. But it is not so easy to describe either of
the extremes in terms of the other. Hence ' panlogism '
of the Hegelian type is a height to which intellectualism
rarely rises, and even then only by regarding ' feeling ' as

and even that of the speculative reason is merely conditional , and only complete in
its practical use" (Ky-it. d. prakt. Vem., II. 2, iii. s.f.).
1 Cp. Humanism, pp. 58-60.

IV TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY 129

irrational ' contingency ' which is ' nothing for thought,'
i.e. inexplicable. More commonly intellectualism has to
come to terms with ' feeling,' as in Mr. Bradley's own
philosophy, which derides the Hegelian's ' unearthly ballet
of bloodless categories,' and as Mr. Sturt has shown, in
some respects exalts ' feeling ' even above intellect.^

But the truth is that the whole question seems merely
one of the convenience and use of psychological classifica-
tions, and that none of these descriptions have explanatory
value. All three ' faculties ' are at bottom only labels for
describing the activities of what may be called indifferently
a unitary personality, or a reacting organism.

So when Mr. Bradley wonders (p. 327) what I am
" to reply when some one chooses to assert that this same
whole is intelligence or feeling," I am not dismayed. I
should merely underline the *' chooses" and beg both
parties to observe that this is what they are severally
* choosing to assert^ and therefore arbitrary. Not more
arbitrary, doubtless, than my own choice, but far more
awkward for tJieir scheme of classification than for mine.
For on mine I should expect to find that ultimate questions
sooner or later involved acts of choice ; as indeed I have
repeatedly, though perhaps too unobtrusively, pointed out.^
Moreover, I have expressly guarded myself against this
particular criticism by passages in Personal Idealism
(p. 86) and Humanism (p. 53). These no doubt occur
in footnotes, but then Mr. Bradley will hardly accuse me
of putting too much into footnotes.

§ 1 1. Finally, before leaving this part of Mr. Bradley's
argument I must say something about his definition of
Practice (p. 317) as an alteration of existence. This seems
altogether too narrow in the sense Mr. Bradley puts upon
it. For ( I ) I cannot possibly assent to his proposal ^ to
exclude not only theoretic interests, but all values, ethical
and aesthetical, from the sphere of ' practice.* It is an
integral part of the Humanist position to contend that

^ Idola Theatri, chaps, v. and ix. This homage paid to feeling is, however,
really nothing but a reluctant recognition of the difficulties of the situation.
2 E.g. Hzimanism, pp. 49, 153, 157. ^ P. 334.

K "v

130 STUDIES IN HUMANISM iv

' truths ' are values, and that values are all-important and
really efficacious, being the real motives which make, un-
make, and alter reality, because the whole of our practical
activity aims at their attainment. To take the activity in
abstraction from the values it aims at, and to conceive the
values without reference to the activity which realizes
them, seems to me equally preposterous.

Hence (2) the means to an alteration of existence
must surely be called practical, and among these are of
course included almost all of what have hitherto been
called the ' purely theoretic ' functions. If Mr. Bradley
will not concede this, cadit quaestio} I, at any rate,
should never have asserted the absorption of the theoretical
in the practical, if I had thought that the means to an
end were to be excluded from the practical. And (3)
we do not, even in practice, always seem to aim at altera-
tion of existence. The preservation of the desirable seems
frequently to be our end.

Again (4) the fruition of the end attained would fall
outside Mr. Bradley's definition. Whereas to me it would
seem intolerable to exclude from Practice, e.g. the 'Evepyeia
'AKivrja-ia'i, which forms the ideal of life and the goal of
effort. I could wish only that it were practicable, as well
as J Tactical !

It seems necessary, therefore, to conceive 'practice' more
broadly as t/te control of experience, and to define as 'practical'
whatever serves, directly or indirectly, to control events. So
to conceive it will probably render it quite obvious that the
aim of the doctrine of the ' subordination ' of ' theory ' to
' practice ' (more properly of the secondary character of the
former) is merely voluntarism, merely to make ' practice '
cover practically {i.e. with the exception of certain intel-
lectualistic delusions) the whole of life, or in other words
to insist on bringing out the active character of experience,
and the fact that in virtue of its psychological genesis
every thought is an act just as it is the aim of intel-
lectualism, alike in its sensationalistic and in its rational-

1 He finally (p. 334 s.f.) seems to concede this when he says " in a secondary
sense anything is practical so far as it is taken as subserving a practical change."

IV TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY 131

istic forms, to obscure and exclude this character and to
declare the conception of activity unmeaning.^ Intellec-
tualism, in short, is deeply committed to what Mr. Sturt
has well denominated ' the fallacy of Passivism ' in all its
forms.

If, on the other hand, we press Mr. Bradley's remark
that " my practice is the alteration by me of existence
inward and outward," it would seem that the notion of an
' independent ' theoretic life must speedily collapse. For
even the most ' theoretical ' of thoughts will induce at
least an inward ' alteration ' of the thinker. And this,
presumably, will show itself in differences of ' outward '
action, and so have ' practical consequences.'

If, again, ' alteration of existence ' is not meant un-
equivocally to imply the activity of a human agent, if it
is intended to cover the possibility that it may come
about of itself, or as the result of an immanent self-develop-
ment of a non-human Absolute, it would be interesting
to know whether Mr. Bradley would attribute ' practice '
also to his Absolute, or whether it would resemble the
Aristotelian 'gods' in having none. In short, the formula
is woefully lacking in explicitness.

But even if we accepted Mr. Bradley's definition, we
should continue to be perplexed by his needlessly ambigu-
ous use of ' practical.' We seem to find the * practical '
subdivided into the practical and the non-practical (p. 319):
we are told (pp. 322 s./. and 333) that Mr. Bradley is
dear (!) that in the end there is no distinction between
' theory ' and ' practice ' ; and then again (what I own I
had suspected) that there are several senses of ' practical '
such that what in one sense is practical is not so in
another (p. 323).^ But is it not the duty of a writer who

^ Cp. Mr. Bradley's teaching on this subject {^Appearance and Reality}
pp. 1 16-7 and 483-5) and the comments of Prof. James in his admirable chapter
on ' the Experience of Activity ' in The Pluralistic Universe.

• In his Note on pp. 332-4 Mr. Bradley recurs to the point in a way which
betrays a feeling that his first treatment was not wholly satisfactorj'. After
again asserting that the distinction of practical and non-practical is ultimately
one of degree, he lays it down that nevertheless a ' practical ' activity may be
so called ' ' when and so far as its product directly qualifies the existence which
is altered." — This involves a distinct correction of the definition given before. A
little later he admits that " in a secondary sense anything is practical so far as it

132 STUDIES IN HUMANISM iv

confessedly uses a term in several senses to explain
distinctly what those senses are ?

§ 1 2. One hardly knows how much notice to take of an
apparently casual remark on page 322 to the effect that if
I understood my own doctrine, I should have to hold that
any end however perverted was rational, and any idea
however mad was truth, so soon as any one insisted on it.
For subsequently (p. 329) Mr. Bradley seems graciously
to decide that he will not attribute so ' insane ' a doctrine
even to me. Why then did he mention it as if it were
relevant ? Did he not know that he was merely dishing
up an old objection to Protagoras, the effeteness of which
even Plato was candid enough to avow ? ^ Since then
this caricature has often been exposed, most recently in
the explicit account of the development of objective truth
out of subjective valuations given in Humanism, pages
58-60. Its reappearance now that the conceptions of
variation and selection are in universal use is simply
stupefying, and if it is intended as a serious argument, it
shows clearly that Mr. Bradley has yet to grasp the
essential difference between an axiom and a postulate.
In any case Mr. Bradley could do his followers a great
service if, instead of so crudely travestying my argument,
he supplied them with an alternative to it, and showed
them how to deal with the empirical existence of the
infinite variety in ends and ideas. Or does he not admit
this to constitute a scientific problem, and is it merely in
" appearance " that our views diverge ?

§13. Mr. Bradley's article is so rich in provocations
of all sorts that I forbear to reply to all of them. Still
I should have liked to discuss the difficulties he raises
about the conception of Will, which seems to be the

is taken as subserving a practical change." — This surely would include every-
thing and amply account for the ' perception of a horse ' which Mr. Bradley is
pleased to call a 'revelation.' For, as the psychologists are daily showing, our
very modes of perception are relative to our practical needs. The human eye is
not like the eye of an eagle or a cat, because it is used differently, and the per-
ception of the horse would never have been attained, unless it had been useful to
such of our ancestors as had acquired eyes. Presumably the eyes of Micromegas
would be fitted to see a horse as little as Mr. Bradley's are to see a microbe or a
ghost.

^ Theaetettis, 166-7, and cp. Essay ii. § 5-6.

,v TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY 133

only other point which may be thought to possess some
relevance to the controversy, did we not seem so far
from agreeing on the meaning of the term. Rather
than plunge into a long disquisition on the proper senses
of ' Will,' and their proper correlation, I will relinquish
the attempt to clear up matters. I will remark only that
Mr. Bradley's second definition of (a depersonalized) Will
as " a process of passage from idea into existence " is as
intellectualistic and as unacceptable as " the self-realiza-
tion of an idea," and am curious to know how he gets from
one to the other without exemplifying the pragmatist
doctrine that definitions are relative to purpose. More-
over, it seems arbitrary and inconvenient to deny the
volitional quality of an achievement simply because the
Will has realized itself, and now accepts and sustains
the situation it has created. In the theological language
Mr. Bradley affects in this article, this would be equivalent
to the assertion that because God is the Creator, He
cannot also be the Sustainer, of the universe. I con-
clude, therefore, by pointing out that all the arguments
which Mr. Bradley bases on his conceptions of Will are
to me, once more, corrupted by irrelevance.

I shrink, similarly, from meeting many other interest-
ing points (most of them highly barbed !) with which
Mr. Bradley's paper bristles. The most relevant of these
would seem to be his curiosity about Bain's theory
of belief (p. 315), but I will not attempt to say how
far I think he has refuted it, because I have always found
it very hard to recognize it in the account given of it in
Mr. Bradley's Logic (as usual without specific references).
I have, however, sufficiently justified my conviction that, so
far from refuting Pragmatism by anticipation, Mr. Bradley
appears to have very nearly stumbled into it.

§ 1 4. On page 3 3 1 Mr. Bradley appears to summarize
under four heads that part of his paper which may be
called argumentative. In the first charge that 'the
whole essence ' of truth has been subverted, I would read
' analysed ' for ' subverted.' The second calls it ' a thought-
less compromise ' to treat the result of past volitions as

134 STUDIES IN HUMANISM iv

being my will and choice. But why a ' compromise ' ?
With whom or what ? What have I compromised but
Mr. Bradley's preconceptions, by declining to ignore the
volitional acceptance in the recognition of ' fact ' or to
plunge into the flagrant contradictions of his own
account ? And why ' thoughtless ' ? Because it does not
lend itself to Mr. Bradley's travesties ? The third charge
is partly irrelevant, in so far as it rests on definitions of
' will ' which I reject, partly answered by the account I
have given of the factual basis in our cognitive procedure.

As for Mr. Bradley's fourth difficulty, I should never
have guessed from his very perfunctory and obscure
exposition of it that he attached any importance to
it. And even after I had perceived that it was to be
made into a capital charge, it failed to impress me.
So it seems sufficient to point out that if knowledge be
conceived as secondary without being divorced from
action, and if due reflection is thus rendered a useful
habit, there is no paradox in holding that it may also
profitably reflect on its own genesis. So far from con-
demning philosophic reflection, I could even wish that
its use, especially when conducted on the right humanist
lines, were more extensive.

§ 15. These replies would perhaps suffice, were it not
that Mr. Bradley's paper contains much more than argu-
ments. He makes also what looks like an attempt to
arouse theological prejudice against us.

It is very surprising to observe the general air of
religiosity in which Mr. Bradley has enveloped himself.
I looked in vain for my beloved bete fioire, the Absolute,
and wondered why it had been sent to dwell with Hegel
in eternal night. In its place one found not only the old
ambiguous use of * God' in all its philosophic deceptive-
ness,^ but even allusions to the Jehovah of Mr. Bradley's
youth, and wondered why the Baal of ' Jericho ' received
no honourable mention. Now, as I had always respected
Mr. Bradley's philosophy for never seeking to curry
favour with theology by playing on ambiguous phrases,

1 Cp. Essay xii. § 6.

IV TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY 135

I was naturally puzzled by this change of face. Was
it to be regarded as a reversion, like the return to
the ' correspondence ' view of truth, or respected as an
indication of a change of heart, of a pathetic recrudes-
cence of what Mr. Bradley had learnt (or, as he says,
'imbibed') in his youth about Jehovah (p. 332)? Or
were we witnessing a strategic movement of the absolutist
host, necessitated by the unexpected force of the enemy,
and a recoil of its ' left ' upon its ' right ' wing ? Or lastly,
was it to be interpreted, less charitably, as an attempt to
enlist religious prejudices against the new philosophy by
unfair appeals to a few travestied formulas of a musty
theology ?

The last seemed the boldest and riskiest strategy, and
I should have thought Mr. Bradley too prudent to attempt
it. The controversial maxim verketzern gilt nicht has
not yet taken such firm root in Oxford that it should be
superfluous for us to safeguard ourselves by repudiating
an interpretation and an impression which his language
may countenance. I must protest therefore against the
insinuation that because our views do not conform with
the dogmatic definition of religion it has pleased Mr.
Bradley to impose, we may fitly be branded as irreligious
and as blasphemers against the deity whom Mr. Bradley
so strangely denominates " the lord of suffering and of sin
and of death" (p. 315). Now I am well aware that the
definition of religion is a difficult matter, and that many
of its empirical manifestations accord ill with any of its
definitions. But since the publication of James's Varieties
of Religious Experience, I should have thought that there
were two things that even the hardiest apriorist would
have shrunk from. The first is dogmatizing concerning
what religion 7nust mean, without troubling to inquire
what psychologically the various forms of religious senti-
ment have meant and do mean. Now if Mr. Bradley had
condescended for a moment to contemplate the objective
facts of concrete religion, he could not but have been
struck with the fact that Humanism has the closest
affinities with such important religious phenomena as

136 STUDIES IN HUMANISM iv

Newman's * grammar of assent ' and the widespread
theology of Ritschl. And from James also he might
have learnt that amid all the varieties of religious feeling
the one most constant conception of the divine has been,
not some desiccated formula about the Unity of the
Universe, but a demand for something to respond to the
outcry of the human heart.

I should have thought, therefore, secondly, that what-
ever might be said about the logical subversiveness of the
new views, their value for religion was secured against
attack. For has not James's doctrine of the Will to
believe made manifest the pragmatic value of faith, and
put the religious postulates on the same footing with
those of science ? ^ Nay, has not the common charge against
us been that our doctrines pander to all the crudest
superstitions of the vulgar ? Mr. Bradley, I suppose,
acquits us on this charge ; but his own is far less plausible.

When one remembers further how Mr. Bradley
has himself described religion as mere ' appearance '
riddled with contradictions and denied that " a God
which is all in all is the God of religion," ^ it seems — well
— slightly humorous to find him now setting up standards
of ' orthodox ' theology and solemnly anathematizing
those who have doubted the omnipotence of their ' God '
and the religious value of his (p. 331, cp. p. 316). One
is inclined merely to retort in the words of Valentine —
" Lass unsern Herr Gott aus dem Spass."

His attacks (p. 331) on the two clerical contributors
to Personal Idealism, Dr. Rashdall and particularly Dr.
Bussell, are peculiarly invidious as being ad captandum
appeals to " the more orthodox theologians " and preju-
dicial to their professional status. But it seems some-
what doubtful whether he will find any one naively
* orthodox ' enough to reduce Christianity to a sort
of Crypto -Buddhism at the behest of the author of
Appearance and Reality.

Mr. Bradley must have been well aware that his

^ Essay xvi. §§ 2, 9.
2 Apptarance and Reality, p. 448 (ist ed. ). Cp. Essay xii. § 6.

IV TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY 137

language was wholly ' popular.' He must have known,
as well as Dr. Rashdall or I, that the 'omnipotence' he
claims for his Absolute is not the ' omnipotence ' of the
theologians, and that his Absolute is not obviously identical
with the superhuman power, adequate to all human needs,
which the religious sentiments legitimately postulate.
He must know too that in no religion is the Divine, the
principle of Help and Justice, ever actually regarded as
omnipotent in practice.^ Again, seeing that he has plainly
shown us that his Absolute possesses the religious attri-
butes only as it possesses all else, and that for all human
purposes it is impotent and worthless, was it not most
injudicious to attack us on religious grounds ? And has
he not justly provoked the retort that we feel his whole
Absolutism to be a worthless technicality, if its true
character is revealed, and a fulsome fraud upon all man's
most sacred feelings, if it is not ?

§ 16. Curiously enough, however, Mr. Bradley's paper
does not close with the enigmatic piety which has provoked
these strictures. It is followed by a fit of agnosticism
which might have come straight out of Herbert Spencer's
Autobiography} The promise of philosophy " even in the
end is no clear theory nor any complete understanding or
vision " ; " its certain reward is a continual evidence and
a heightened apprehension of the ineffable mystery of
life." Only Spencer and Mr. Bradley tend in opposite
directions : the former, more truly, feels that this final
incomprehensibility is a " paralysing thought," and inclines
towards the authoritative dogma of some religion that
will claim to know ; the latter seems to regard it as
edifying, and abandons the religious formulas to dis-
burden himself of his contradictions in the bottomless pit
of the Absolute. To the one, religion holds out more
hopes of knowledge than philosophy, to the other, less.
But as a satisfaction to the philosophic craving, to the
will-to-know, neither policy, alas, seems to promise much.
The philosopher's reasoning is rewarded merely with the
sorry privilege accorded by Polyphemus to Odysseus.

1 Cp. Essay xii. § 6. "^ Cp. that work, ii. pp. 469-471.

138 STUDIES IN HUMANISM iv

For what profit is it, if break down it must, that it
should perish somewhat later ? What a satire too it is
upon a philosophic quest that started with the most con-
fident anticipations of the rationality of the universe to
have to end in such fiasco ! Can Mr. Bradley wonder, if
this is really all his philosophy can come to, that philo-
sophy is disregarded and despised, or that other philo-
sophers prefer to bend their footsteps in more promising
directions ? And it seems still stranger that it should be
deemed appropriate to scathe all fresh attempts at ex-
ploration with unmeasured contumely a priori. Surely a
somewhat humbler and less ' hybristic ' note would better
become the actual situation !

§ 17. One notes indeed with satisfaction that in places
Mr. Bradley seems to evince some dim consciousness of
the real predicament. At all events he is growing more
liberal in throwing open for discussion questions which
we have always been assured on his side had been
definitively closed. We may welcome, therefore, and note
for future use, Mr. Bradley's admission of " well-known
difficulties " in the infinity of God (p. 331), his description
of pluralism as " a very promising adventure," and the
" pleasure " it would give him to learn that its diffi-
culties can be surmounted (p. 327). The tone of these
admissions, it is true, still smacks of the judge who was
* open to conviction, but by Jove would like to see the
man who could convince him.' And he hastens to add
that there are ' obvious difficulties ' (not stated) on the
other side. Nor does he make it clear why, if real anti-
nomies exist on these points, he should have so decisively
adopted the one alternative, instead of suspending judgment
and looking out for a real solution.

But on the whole I read these admissions as a hopeful
sign that the dwellers in ' Jericho ' are not so content with
their gloomy ghettoes as they had seemed, nor so sure that
it is in very deed the heavenly Jerusalem. Ere long they
may come out to parley of their own accord and offer us
terms, nay themselves dismantle antiquated defences that
are useless against modern ordnance ! And when the

IV TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY 139

stronghold of the Absolute is once declared an open town,
no longer cramped within walls, nor serving as a strait
prison for the human soul, it can be refurbished and
extended for those to dwell in whose tastes its habitations
please. We too shall then have no further motive to molest
an Absolutism which has ceased to oppress us and to be
a menace to the liberty of thought. We may still decline
to go to ' Jericho,' and prefer the open country, abiding
in our tents with the household gods who suffice for our
needs and need our co-operation because of their "pathetic
weakness." -^ But why should we contend against the
genial Absolutes of Prof. Taylor, which is finally reduced
to an emotional postulate,^ or of Prof. Royce,^ which
becomes the ultimate satisfaction of our social instincts
and forms a sort of salon where all are at home and
can meet their friends, so long as we escape the grim
all-compelling monster of Mr. Bradley's nightmare?
When we are no longer treated as Ishmaelites, there will
be peace in the land, a peace attained, not by what must
surely by this time seem the impossible method of snub-
bing and snuffing out the new philosophy, but by a
mutual toleration based on respect for the various idio-
syncrasies of men.* Nor will there then any longer be
occasion to reproach Philosophy that its favourite idolon
fori is simply Billingsgate.

§ 1 8. Life will be easier in those days, and with it philo-
sophy. For philosophers will have ceased to confound
obscurity with profundity, difficulty with truth, and to
expect that because some truths are hard, therefore all
hard sayings are true. Nor will they any longer feel
aggrieved, like Mr. Bradley (p. 335 s.f\ at the prospect
of everything that would render philosophy easier and
more attractive. For they will realize that the intrinsic

1 In Dr. Bussell's striking phrase [Personal Idealis7n, p. 341).

2 Elements of Metaphysics, p. 317 ; cp. p. 253. Prof. Taylor's disclaimer in
Mind, N.S. No. 57, p. 86, upholds the claim to universal cogency and repre-
sents the argument for a postulated Absolute as only ad hominem. But my
objection to a postulated Absolute is not to the postulation, but merely to the
fact that this postulate frustrates itself.

^ On the Eternal and the Practical.
* Cp. Essay xii. §§ 8, 10.

140 STUDIES IN HUMANISM iv

difficulties of thinking as an exercise of faculty will always
suffice to preserve the ' dignity ' of philosophy, and that it
is needless to enhance them by adding unintelligibilities
and aimless word-play.

Philosophy will always be hard, I agree. In some
respects and for three reasons : because thinking is the
hardest of exercises, because it presupposes much special
knowledge to grasp the use of general conceptions which
are devoid of meaning in abstraction from the experience
they serve to organize, and because to rethink old con-
ceptions into new ones is irksome and frequently demands
a flash of insight before we can really ' see ' it all. But
one might well despair of the human reason if what had
once been clearly thought could not always be lucidly
expressed. Obscurity of expression is nothing admirable ;
it is always a bar to the comprehension of any subject,
and it is fatal in a subject where the intrinsic difficulties
are so great and the psychological variations of the
minds which apprehend them so extreme ; it is, moreover,
an easy refuge for confusion of thought. And it is
surely one of the quaintest of academic superstitions to
think that obscurity and confusion of thought have as
such, * pedagogical value.' In view of these facts what
reascn can there be for making Philosophy anything
like so obscure, hard, repulsive, and unprofitable as the
intellectualist systems which have obfuscated us so long ?

THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH ^

ARGUMENT

The great antithesis between Pragmatism and Intellectualism as to the nature
of Truth. I. The predication of truth a specifically human habit. The
existence oi false claims to truth. How then s^re false claims to be dis-
criminated from true ? Intellectualism fails to answer this, and succumbs
to the ambiguity of truth ('claim' and 'validity'). Illustrations from
Plato and others. II. Universality and importance of the ambiguity.
The refusal of Intellectualism to consider it. III. The pragmatic
answer. Relevance and value relative to purpose. Hence ' truth ' a
valuation. The convergence of values. IV. The evaluation of claims
proceeds pragmatically. ' Truth ' implies relevance and usually reference
to proximate ends. V. The pragmatic definition of ' Truth ' : its value
for refuting naturalism and simplifying the classification of the sciences.
VI. A challenge to Intellectualism to refute Pragmatism by evaluating
any truth non-pragmatically .

The purpose of this essay is to bring to a clear issue, and
so possibly to the prospect of a settlement, the conflict of
opinion now raging in the philosophic world as to the
nature of the conception of * truth.' This issue is an
essential part of the greater conflict between the old in-
tellectualist and the new * pragmatist ' school of thought,
which extends over the whole field of philosophy. For,
in consequence of the difference between the aims and
methods of the two schools, there is probably no intel-
lectualist treatment of any problem which does not need,
and will not bear, restatement in voluntarist terms. But
the clash of these two great antithetical attitudes towards
life is certainly more dramatic at some points than at
others. The influence of belief upon thought, its value

^ A revised form of a paper which appeared in Mind for April 1906 (N.S.
No. 58).

141

142 STUDIES IN HUMANISM v

and function in knowledge, the relation of ' theory ' to
' practice,' the possibility of abstracting from emotional
interest, and of ignoring in ' logic ' the psychological con-
ditions of all judgment, the connexion between knowing
and being, ' truth ' and ' fact,' ' origin ' and ' validity,' the
question of how and how far the real which is said to be
' discovered ' is really ' made,' the ' plasticity ' and deter-
minable indetermination of reality, the contribution of
voluntary acceptance to the constitution of ' fact,' the
nature of purpose and of ' mechanism,' the value of teleo-
logy, the all-controlling presence of value-judgments and
the interrelations of their various forms, the proper mean-
ing of ' reason,' ' faith,' 'thought,' 'will,' ' freedom,' ' necessity,'
all these are critical points at which burning questions
have arisen or may arise, and at all of them the new
philosophy seems able to provide a distinctive and con-
sistent treatment. Thus there is throughout the field
every promise of interesting discoveries and of a success-
ful campaign for a thoroughgoing voluntarism that un-
sparingly impugns the intellectualist tradition.

But the aim of the present essay must be restricted.
It will be confined to one small corner of the battlefield,
viz. to the single question of the making of ' truth ' and
the nieaning of a term which is more often mouthed in a
passion of unreasoning loyalty than subjected to calm and
logical analysis. I propose to show, (i) that such analysis
is necessary and possible ; (2) that it results in a problem
which the current intellectualist logic can neither dismiss
nor solve ; (3) that to discard the abstractions of this
formal logic at once renders this problem simple and
soluble ; (4) that to solve it is to establish the pragmatist
criterion of truth ; (5) that the resulting definition of truth
unifies experience and rationalizes a well-established
classification of the sciences ; and (6) I shall conclude
with a twofold challenge to intellectualist logicians, failure
to meet which will, I think, bring out with all desirable
clearness that their system at present is as devoid of in-
tellectual completeness as it is of practical fecundity.

This design, it will be seen, deliberately rules out the

V THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH 143

references to questions of belief, desire, and will, and their
ineradicable influence upon cognition, with which Volun-
tarism has made so much effective play, and this although
I am keenly conscious both that their presence as psychical
facts in all knowing is hardly open to denial,^ and that
their recognition is essential to the full appreciation of
our case. But I am desirous of meeting our adversaries
on their own ground, that of abstract logic, and of giving
them every advantage of position. And so, even at the
risk of reducing the real interest of my subject, I will
discuss it on the ground of as ' pure,' i.e. as formal^ a logic
as is compatible with the continuance of actual thinking.

Let us begin then with the problem of analysing the
conception of * truth,' and, to clear up our ideas, let us first
observe the extension of the term. We may safely lay it
down that the use of truth is Ihiov avOpcoirw, a habit
peculiar to man. Animals, that is, do not attain to or
use the conception. They do not effect discriminations
within their experience by means of the predicates ' true '
and ' false.' Again, even the philosophers who have been
most prodigal of dogmas concerning the nature of an
' infinite ' intelligence (whatever that may mean !), have
evinced much hesitation about attributing to it the dis-
cursive procedures of our own, and have usually hinted
that it would transcend the predication of truth and
falsehood. As being then a specific peculiarity of the
human mind, the conception of ' truth ' seems closely
analogous to that of * good ' and of ' beautiful,' which seem
as naturally to possess antithetical predicates in the ' bad '
and the ' ugly,' as the ' true ' does in the ' false.' And it
may be anticipated that when our psychology has quite
outgrown the materialistic prejudices of its adolescence,
it will probably regard all these habits of judging ex-

^ In point of fact such denial has never been attempted : inquiries as to how
logic can validly consider a 'pure' thought, abstracted from the psychological
conditions of actual thinking, have merely been ignored. My Formal Logic
may now, however, be said to have established that such ' logic ' is meaningless.

144 STUDIES IN HUMANISM v

periences as just as distinctive and ultimate features of
mental process as are the ultimate facts of our perception.
In a sense, therefore, the predications of ' good ' and ' bad,'
' true ' and ' false,' etc., may take rank with the experiences
of * sweet,' * red,' ' loud,' ' hard,' etc, as ultimate facts which
need be analysed no further.^

We may next infer that by a truth we mean a pro-
position to which this attribute ' true ' has somehow been
attached, and which, consequently, is envisaged sub specie
veri. The Truths therefore, is the totality of things to
which this mode of treatment is applied or applicable,
whether or not this extends over the whole of our ex-
perience.

If now all propositions which involve this predication
of truth really deserved it, if all that professes and seems
to be ' true ' were really true, no difficulty would arise.
Things would be ' true ' or ' false ' as simply and un-
ambiguously as they are ' sweet ' or * sour,' ' red ' or ' blue,'
and nothing could disturb our judgments or convict them
of illusion. But in the sphere of knowledge such, notori-
ously, is not the case. Our anticipations are often falsi-
fied, our claims prove frequently untenable. Our truths
may turn out to be false, our goods to be bad : falsehood
and error are as rampant as evil in the world of our
experience.

This fact compels us (i) to an enlargement, and (2) to
a distinction, in the realm of truth. For the logician

* truth ' becomes a problem, enlarged so as to include

* falsity ' as well, and so, strictly, our problem is the con-
templation of experience sub specie veri et falsi. Secondly,
if not all that claims truth is true, must we not distinguish
this initial claim from whatever procedure subsequently
justifies or validates it ? Truth, therefore, ivill become
ambiguous. It will mean primarily a claim which may or
may not turn out to be valid. It will mean, secondarily,
such a claim after it has been tested and ratified, by

1 The purport of this very elementary remark, which is still very remote from
the real problem of truth, is to confute the notion, which seems dimly to
underlie some intellectualist criticisms, that the specific character of the truth-
predication is ignored in pragmatist quarters.

V THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH 145

processes which it behoves us to examine. In the first
sense, as a claim, it will always have to be regarded with
suspicion. For we shall not know whether it is really
and fully true, and we shall tend to reserve this honour-
able predicate for what has victoriously sustained its
claim. And once we realize that a claim to truth is
involved in every assertion as such^ our vigilance will be
sharpened. A claim to truth, being inherent in assertion
as such, will come to seem a formal and trivial thing,
worth noting once for all, but possessing little real interest
for knowledge. A formal logic, therefore, which restricts
itself to the registration of such formal claims, we shall
regard as solemn trifling ; but it will seem a matter of
vital importance and of agonized inquiry what it is that
validates such claims and makes them really true. And
with regard to any ' truth ' that has been asserted, our first
demand will be to know what is de facto its condition,
whether what it sets forth has been fully validated, or
whether it is still a mere, and possibly a random, claim.
For this evidently will make all the difference to its
meaning and logical value. That '2 + 2 = 4' ^rid that
' truth is indefinable ' stand, e.g. logically on a very
different footing : the one is part of a tried and tested
system of arithmetical truth, the other the desperate
refuge of a bankrupt or indolent theory.

Under such conditions far-reaching confusions could
be avoided only by the unobtrusive operation of a bene-
ficent providence. But that such miraculous intervention
should guard logicians against the consequences of their
negligence was hardly to be hoped for. Accordingly
we find a whole cloud of witnesses to this confusion,
from Plato, the great originator of the intellectualistic in-
terpretation of life, down to the latest ' critics ' of Pragma-
tism with all their pathetic inability to do more than
reiterate the confusions of the Theaetetus. For example,
this is how Plato conducts his refutation of Protagoras in
a critical stage of his polemic : — ^

^''Socrates. And how about Protagoras himself? If

^ Theaetetus, 170 E-171 B, Jovvett's translation. Italics mine.

146 STUDIES IN HUMANISM v

neither he nor the multitude thought, as indeed they do
not think, that man is the measure of all things, must it
not follow that the truth {validity) of which Protagoras
wrote would be true {claim) to no one ? But if you
suppose that he himself thought this, and that the multi-
tude does not agree with him, you must begin by allowing
that in whatever proportion the many are more than one,
his truth {validity) is more untrue {claim) than true ? " (not
necessarily, for all truths start their career in a minority
of one, as an individual's claims, and obtain recognition
only after a long struggle).

" Theodorus. That would follow if the truth {validity)
is supposed to vary with individual opinion.

" Socrates. And the best of the joke is that he acknow-
ledges the truth {as claim, Protagoras ; as validity, Plato)
of their opinion who believe his own opinion to be false ;
for he admits that the opinions of all men are true " {as
claims ; cp. also p. 309).

For a more compact expression of the same ambiguity
we may have recourse to Mr. Bradley, " About the truth
of this Law " (of Contradiction) " so far as it applies, there
is in my opinion no question. The question will be rather
as to how far the Law applies and how far therefore it is
tru,.!^ ^ The first proposition is either a truism or false.
It is a truism if ' truth ' is taken in the sense of ' claim ' ;
for it then only states that a claim is good if the ques-
tion of its application is waived. In any other sense of
' truth ' it is false (or rather self-contradictory), since it
admits that there is a question about the application of
the ' Law,' and it is not until the application is attempted
that validity can be tested. In the second proposition it
is implied that ' truth ' depends, not on the mere claim,
but on the possibility of application.

Or, again, let us note how Prof. A. E. Taylor betters
his master's instruction in an interesting article on ' Truth
and Practice ' in the Phil. Rev. for May 1 905. He first lays
it down that " true propositions are those which have an
unconditional claim on our recognition " (of their validity,

^ Mind, V. N.S. , 20, p. 470. Italics mine.

V THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH 147

or merely of their claim ?), and then pronounces that
" truth is just the system of propositions which have an
unconditional claim to be recognized as valid^ ^ And lest
he should not have made the paradox of this confusion
evident enough, he repeats (p. 273) that "the truth of a
statement means not the actual fact of its recognition "
{i.e. of its de facto validity), "but its rightful claim on our
recognition" (p. 274)." In short, as he does not distin-
guish between ' claim ' and ' right,' he cannot see that the
question of truth is as to when and how a ' claim ' is to
be recognized as ' rightful.' And though he wisely refrains
from even attempting to tell us how the clamorousness of
a claim is going to establish its validity, it is clear that
his failure to observe the distinction demolishes his
definition of truth.

Mr. Joachim's Nature of Truth does not exemplify
this confusion so clearly merely because it does not get
to the point at which it is revealed. His theory of
truth breaks down before this point is reached. He
conceives the nature of truth to concern only the question
of what ' the ideal ' should be, even though it should be
unattainable by man, as indeed it turns out to be.
Thus the problem of how we validate claims to truth
is treated as irrelevant.^ Hence it is only casually
that phrases like 'entitled to claim' occur (p. 109),
or that the substantiating of a claim to truth is said to
consist in its recognition and adoption " by all intelligent
people" (p. 27). Still on p. 118 it seems to be implied
that a " thought which claims truth as affirming universal
meaning " need not undergo any further verification. It
is evident, in short, that not much can be expected from
theories which have overlooked so vital a distinction.
Their unawareness of it will vitiate all their discussions
of the nature of ' truth,' by which they will mean now the
one sense, now the other, and now both, in inextricable
fallacy.

' Pp. 271, 288. Italics mine.
- Cp. also pp. 276 and 278.

^ As it is by Mr. Bradley, who, as Prof. Hoernle remarks, "deals with the
question how ive correct our errors in a footnote ! " {Mind xiv. 321).

148 STUDIES IN HUMANISM v

Our provisional analysis, therefore, has resulted in our
detecting an important ambiguity in the conception of
truth which, unless it can be cleared up, must hopelessly
vitiate all discussion. In view of this distressing situation
it becomes our bounden duty to inquire Jiow an accepted
truth may be distinguished from a mere claim, and how a
claim to truth may be validated. For any logic which
aims at dealing with actual thinking the urgency of this
inquiry can hardly be exaggerated. But even the most
' purely ' intellectual and futilely formal theory of know-
ledge can hardly refuse to undertake it. For the
ambiguity which raises the problem is absolutely all-
pervading. As we saw, a formal claim to truth is co-
extensive with the sphere of logical judgment. No
judgment proclaims its own fallibility ; its formal claim
is always to be true. We are always liable, therefore, to
misinterpret every judgment. We may take as a validated
truth what in point of fact is really an unsupported claim.
But inasmuch as such a claim may always be erroneous,
we are constantly in danger of accepting as validly true
what, if tested, would be utterly untenable. Every
asirsrtion is ambiguous, and as it shows no outward
indication of what it really means, we can hardly be
said to know the meaning of any assertion whatsoever.
On any view of logic, the disastrous and demoralizing
consequences of such a situation may be imagined. It
is imperative therefore to distinguish sharply between
the formal inclusion of a statement in the sphere of
ti'uth-or-falsity, and its incorporation into a system of
tested truth. For unless we do so, we simply court
deception.

This possibility of deception, moreover, becomes the
more serious when we realize how impotent our formal
logic is to conceive this indispensable distinction and to
guard us against so fatal a confusion. Instead of proving
a help to the logician it here becomes a snare, by reason
of the fundamental abstraction of its standpoint. For if,

V THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH 149

following Mr. Alfred Sidgwick's brilliant lead, we regard
as Formal Logic every treatment of our cognitive processes
which abstracts from the concrete application of our logical
functions to actual cases of knowing, it is easy to see that
no such logic can help us, because the meaning of an asser-
tion can never be determined apart from the actual applica-
tion.^ From the mere verbal form, that is, we cannot tell
whether we are dealing with a valid judgment or a sheer
claim. To settle this, we must go behind the statement : we
must go into the rights of the case. Meaning depends upon
purpose, and purpose is a question of psychical fact, of the
context and use of the form of words in actual knowing.
But all this is just what the abstract standpoint of Formal
Logic forbids us to examine. It conceives the meaning
of a proposition to be somehow inherent in it as a form
of words, apart from its use. So when it finds that
the same words may be used to convey a variety of
meanings in various contexts, it supposes itself to have
the same form, not of words, but of judgment, and
solemnly declares it to be as such ambiguous, even
though in each actual case of use the meaning intended
may be perfectly clear to the meanest understanding ! It
seems more than doubtful, therefore, whether a genuine
admission of the validity of our distinction could be
extracted from any formal logician. For even if he
could be induced to admit it in words, he would yet
insist on treating it too as purely formal, and rule out
on principle attempts to determine how de facto the
distinction was established and employed.

Although, therefore, our distinction appears to be as
clear as it is important, it does not seem at all certain
that it would be admitted by the logicians who are so
enamoured of truth in the abstract that they have ceased
to recognize it in the concrete. More probably they
would protest that logic was being conducted back to
the old puzzle of a general criterion of truth and error,
and would adduce the failures of their predecessors as a
valid excuse for their present apathy. Or at most they

^ Cp. Essays i. § 2, and iii. § lo.

150 STUDIES IN HUMANISM v

might concede that a distinction between a truth and a
claim to truth must indeed be made, but allege that it
could not take any but a negative form. The sole
criterion of truth, that is, which can be given, is that truth
is not self-contradictory or incoherent.

This statement, in the first place, means a refusal to
go into the actual question how truth is made : it is an
attempt to avoid the test of application, and to conceive
truth as inherent in the logical terms in the abstract.
But this is really to render ' truth ' wholly verbal. For
the inherent meanings are merely the established meanings
of the words employed. It is, secondly, merely dogmatic
assertion : it can hardly inspire confidence so long as it
precedes and precludes examination of the positive solu-
tions of the problem, and assumes the conceptions of ' self-
contradiction ' or ' incoherence ' as the simplest things in
the world. In point of fact neither of them has been
adequately analysed by intellectualist logicians, nor is
either of them naturally so translucent as to shed a flood
of light on any subject. As, however, we cannot now
enter upon their obscurities, and examine what (if any-
thing) either ' coherence ' or * consistency ' really means,
it must suffice to remark that Capt. H. V. Knox's
masterly article in the April (1905) number of Mind^
contains ample justification for what I have said about the
principle of contradiction. If on the other hand the
' negative criterion ' be stated in the form of incoherence,
I would inquire merely how intellectualist logic proposes
to distinguish the logical coherence, to which it appeals,
from the psychological coherence, which it despises. Until
this difficult (or impossible ?) feat has been achieved, we
may safely move on.^

Ill

Let us proceed therefore to discard old prejudices and
to consider how in point of fact we sift claims and
discriminate between ' claims ' and ' truths,' how the raw

^ N.S. No. 54; cp. Formal Logic, ch. x. ^ Cf. also Hicmanis7n, pp. 52-53.

V THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH 151

material of a science is elaborated into its final structure,
how, in short, truth is made. Now this question is not
intrinsically a hopeless one. It is not even particularly
difficult in theory. For it concerns essentially facts
which may be observed, and with care and attention it
should be possible to determine whether the procedures
of the various sciences have anything in common, and if
so what. By such an inductive appeal to the facts,
therefore, we greatly simplify our problem, and may
possibly discover its solution. Any obstacle which we
may encounter will come merely from the difficulty of
intelligently observing the special procedures of so
many sciences and of seizing their salient points and
general import ; we shall not be foredoomed to failure
by any intrinsic absurdity of our enterprise.

Now it would be possible to arrive at our solution
by a critical examination of every known science in
detail, but it is evident that this procedure would be
very long and laborious. It seems better, therefore,
merely to state the condensed results of such investigations.
They will in this shape stand out more clearly and better
exhibit the trend of an argument which runs as follows : —

It being taken as established that the sphere of logic
is that of the antithetical valuations ' true ' and * false,'
we observe, in the first place, that in every science the
effective truth or falsity of an answer depends on its
relevance to the question raised in that science. It does
not matter that a physicist's language should reek of
' crude realism ' or an engineer's calculations lack ' exact-
ness,' if both are right enough for their immediate purpose.
Whereas, when an irrelevant answer is given, it is justly
treated as non-existent for that science ; no question
is raised whether it is ' true ' or ' false.' We observe,
secondly, that every science has a definitely circumscribed
subject-matter, a definite method of treating it, and a
definitely articulated body of interpretations. Every
science, in other words, forms a system of truths about
some subject. But inasmuch as every science is con-
cerned with some aspect of our total experience, and no

152 STUDIES IN HUMANISM v

science deals with that whole under every aspect, it is
clear that sciences arise by the limitation of subjects, the
selection of standpoints, and the specialization of methods.
All these operations, however, are artificial, and in a
sense arbitrary, and none of them can be conceived to
come about except by the action of a purposing intelli-
gence. It follows that the nature of the purpose which
is pursued in a science will yield the deepest insight into
its nature ; for what we want to know in the science will
determine the questions we put, and their bearing on the
questions put will determine the standing of the answers
we attain. If we can take the answers as relevant to
our questions and conducive to our ends, they will yield
' truth ' ; if we cannot, ' falsity.' ^

Seeing thus that everywhere truth and falsity
depend on the purpose which constitutes the science and
are bestowed accordingly, we begin to perceive, what
we ought never to have forgotten, that the predicates
' true ' and ' false ' are not unrelated to ' good ' and
* bad.' For good and bad also (in their wider and
primary sense) have reference to purpose. ' Good ' is what
conduces to, ' bad ' what thwarts, a purpose. And so it
would seem that ' true ' and ' false ' were valuations, forms
of the ' good '-or-* bad ' which indicates a reference to an
end. Or, as Aristotle said long ago, " in the case of
the intelligence which is theoretical, and neither practical
nor productive, its ' good ' and ' bad ' is ' truth ' and
' falsehood.' " '

Truth, then, being a valuation, has reference to a
purpose. What precisely that reference is will depend
on the purpose, which may extend over the whole range
of human interest. But it is only in its primary aspect,
as valued by individuals, that the predication of ' truth '
will refer thus widely to any purpose any one may
entertain in a cognitive operation. For it stands to
reason that the power of constituting ' objective ' truth

1 But cp. note on p. 154.

"^ Eth. Nic. vi. 2, 3. Cp. De Anim. iii. 7, 431 b 10, where it is stated
that " the true and false are in the same class with the good and bad,"
i.e. are valuations.

V THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH 153

is not granted so easily. Society exercises almost as
severe a control over the intellectual as over the moral
eccentricities and nonconformities of its members ; indeed
it often so organizes itself as to render the recognition
of new truth nearly impossible. Whatever, therefore,
individuals may recognize and value as ' true,' the ' truths '
which de facto prevail and are recognized as objective
will only be a selection from those we are subjectively
tempted to propound. There is, therefore, no real danger
lest this analysis should destroy the ' objectivity ' of truth
and enthrone subjective licence in its place.

A further convergence in our truth-valuations is pro-
duced by the natural tendency to subordinate all ends or
purposes to the ultimate end or final purpose, ' the Good.'
For in theory, at least, the ' goods,' and therefore the
' truths,' of all the sciences are unified and validated by
their relation to the Supreme Good. In practice no doubt
this ideal is far from being realized, and there arise at
various points conflicts between the various sorts of values
or goods, which doubtless will continue until a perfect
harmony of all our purposes, scientific, moral, aesthetic,
and emotional has been achieved. Such conflicts may, of
course, be made occasions for theatrically opposing ' truth '
to (moral) ' goodness,' ' virtue ' to ' happiness,' ' science ' to
' art,' etc., and afford much scope for dithyrambic declama-
tion. But a sober and clear-headed thought will not
be intolerant nor disposed to treat such oppositions as
final and absolute : even where under the circumstances
their reality must provisionally be admitted, it will essay
rather to evaluate each claim with reference to the highest
conception of ultimate good which for the time being
seems attainable. It will be very chary, therefore, of
sacrificing either side beyond recall ; it will neither allow
the claims of truth to oppress those of moral virtue nor
those of moral virtue to suppress art. But it will still more
decidedly hold aloof from the quixotic attempt to conceive
the sphere of each valuation as independent and as wholly
severed from the rest.

154 STUDIES IN HUMANISM

We have seen so far that truth is a form of value, and
the logical judgment a valuation ; but we have not yet
raised the question as to what prompts us in bestowing
or withholding this value, what are our guiding principles
in thus evaluating our experience. The answer to this
question takes us straight into the heart of Pragmatism.
Nay, the answer to this question is Pragmatism, and gives
the sense in which Pragmatism professes to have a criterion
of truth. For the pragmatist contends that he has an
answer which is simple, and open to inspection and easily
tested. He simply bids us go to the facts and observe
the actual operations of our knowing. If we will but do
this, we shall ' discover ' that in all actual knowing the
question whether an assertion is ' true ' or ' false ' is
decided uniformly and very simply. It is decided, that is,
by its consequences, by its bearing on the interest which
prompted to the assertion, by its relation to the purpose
which put the question. To add to this that the conse-
quences must be good is superfluous. For if and so far
as an assertion satisfies or forwards the purpose of the
inquiry to which it owes its being, it is so far ' true ' ; if
and so far as it thwarts or baffles it, it is unworkable,
unserviceable, ' false.' And * true ' and ' false,' we have
seen, are the intellectual forms of ' good ' and * bad.' Or
in other words, a ' truth ' is what is useful in building up
a science ; a ' falsehood ' what is useless or noxious for
this same purpose.^ A * science,' similarly, is ' good ' if it
can be used to harmonize our life ; if it cannot, it is a
pseudo-science or a game. To determine therefore whether
any answer to any question is ' true ' or * false,' we have
merely to note its effect upon the inquiry in which we
are interested, and in relation to which it has arisen. And
if these effects are favourable, the answer is ' true ' and
' good ' for our purpose, and ' useful ' as a means to the

1 After allowance has been made for methodological assumptions, which may
turn out to be ' fictions. ' ' Lies ' exist as such only after they have been
detected ; but then they have usually ceased to be useful.

V THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH 155

end we pursue.^ Here, then, we have exposed to view
the whole rationale of Pragmatism, the source of the
famous paradoxes that ' truth ' depends on its conse-
quences, that the ' true ' must be ' good ' and ' useful ' and
' practical.' I confess that to me they have never seemed
more than truisms so simple that I used to fear lest too
elaborate an insistence on them should be taken as an
insult to the intelligence of my readers. But experience
has shown that I was too sanguine, and now I even feel
impelled to guard still further against two possible mis-
apprehensions into which an unthinking philosopher might
fall.

I will point out, in the first place, that when we said
that truth was estimated by its consequences for some
purpose, we were speaking subject to the social character
of truth, and quite generally. What consequences are
relevant to what purposes depends, of course, on the
subject-matter of each science, and may sometimes be in
doubt, when the question may be interpreted in several
contexts. But as a rule the character of the question
sufficiently defines the answer which can be treated as
relevantly true. It is not necessary, therefore, seriously
to contemplate absurdities such as, e.g., the intrusion of
ethical or aesthetical motives into the estimation of mathe-
matical truths, or to refute claims that the isosceles
triangle is more virtuous than the scalene, or an integer
nobler than a vulgar fraction, or that heavenly bodies
must move not in ellipses but in circles, because the circle
is the most perfect figure. Pragmatism is far less likely
to countenance such confusions than the intellectualist
theories from which I drew my last illustration. In some
cases, doubtless, as in many problems of history and
religion, there will be found deep-seated and enduring
differences of opinion as to what consequences and what

1 Strictly both the 'true' and the 'false' answers are, as Mr. Sidgwick says,
subdivisions of the 'relevant,' and the irrelevant is really unmeaning. But the
unmeaning often seems to be relevant until it is detected ; it is as baffling to
our purpose as the ' false ' ; while the ' false ' answer grows more and more
' irrelevant ' as we realize its ' falsity ' ; it does not mean what we meant to get,
viz. something we can work with. Hence it is so far unmeaning, and in a sense
all thatyiziVj us may be treated as 'false.'

156 STUDIES IN HUMANISM v

tests may be adduced as relevant ; but these differences
already exist, and are in no wise created by being
recognized and explained. Pragmatism, however, by
enlarging our notions of what constitutes relevant evidence,
and insisting on some testing, is far more likely to conduce
to their amicable settlement than the intellectualisms
which condemn all faith as inherently irrational and
irrelevant to knowledge. And, ideally and in principle,
such disagreements as to the ends which are relevant to
the estimation of any evidence are always capable of
being composed by an appeal to the supreme purpose
which unifies and harmonizes all our ends : in practice,
no doubt, we are hardly aware of this, nor agreed as
to what it is ; but the blame, surely, attaches to the
distracted state of our thoughts and not to the prag-
matic analysis of truth. For it would surely be pre-
posterous to expect a mere theory of knowledge to
adjudicate upon and settle offhand, by sheer dint of logic,
all the disputed questions in all the sciences.

My second caution refers to the fact that I have made
the predication of truth dependent on relevance to a proxi-
mate rather than an ultimate scientific purpose. This
represents, I believe, our actual procedure. The ordinary
' truth 5 ' we predicate have but little concern with ultimate
ends and realities. They are true (at least pro tern.) if
they serve their immediate purpose. If any one hereafter
chooses to question them he is at liberty to do so, and
if he can make out his case, to reject them for their
I inadequacy for his ulterior purposes. But even when
the venue and the context of the question have thus
been changed, and so its meaning, the truth of the
original answer is not thereby abolished. It may have
been degraded and reduced to a methodological status,
but this is merely to affirm that what is true and service-
able for one purpose is not necessarily so for another.
And in any case it is time perhaps to cease complaining
that a truth capable of being improved on, i.e. capable of
growing, is so far not absolutely true, and therefore some-
what false and worthy of contempt. For such complaints

V THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH 157

spring from an arbitrary interpretation of a situation that
might more sensibly be envisaged as meaning that none
of the falsehoods, out of which our knowledge struggles in
its growth, is ever wholly false. But in actual knowing
we are not concerned with such arbitrary phrases, but
with the bearing of an answer on a question actually pro-
pounded. And whatever really answers is really ' true,'
even though it may at once be turned into a stepping-
stone to higher truth.^

^ Cp. Essay viii. § 5. If therefore we realize that we are concerned with
human ' truth ' alone, and that truth is ambiguous, there is no paradox in affirma-
tively answering Prof. A. E. Taylor's question {Phil. Rev. xiv. 268) as to whether
" the truth of a newly discovered theorem is created " (it should be " made," i.e.
out of earlier 'truth') " by the fact of its discovery. " He asks "did the doc-
trine of the earth's motion become true when enunciated by the Pythagoreans,
false again when men forgot the Pythagorean astronomy, and true a second time
on the publication of the book of Copernicus?" The ambiguity in this question
may be revealed by asking : ' Do you mean " true " to refer to the valuation of
the new "truth" by us, or to the re-valuation of the old ? ' For the 'discovery' in-
volves both, and both are products of human activity. If then we grant (what is,
I suppose, the case) that the Pythagorean, Ptolemaic and Copernican systems
represent stages in the progress of a successful calculation of celestial motions, it
is clear that each of them was valued as ' true ' while it seemed adequate, and re-
valued as ' false ' when it was improved on. And ' true ' in Prof. Taylor's
question does not, for science, mean 'absolutely true.' The relativity of motion
renders the demand for absolute answers scientifically unmeaning. As well might
one ask, ' What exactly is the distance of the earth from the sun ? ' Moving
bodies, measured by human instruments, have no fixed distance, no absolute
place. The successive scientific truths about them are only better recalculations.
Hence a very slight improvement will occasion a change in their valuation.
Prof. Taylor has failed to observe that he has conceived the scientific problem too
loosely in grouping together the Pythagorean and the Copernican theory as alike
cases of the earth's motion. No doubt they may both be so denominated, but
the scientific value of the two theories was very different, and the Ptolemaic
system is intermediate in value as well as in time. He might as well have
taken a more modern instance and argued that the emission theory of light was
true ' all along ' because the discovery of radio-activity has forced its undulatory
rival to admit that light is sometimes produced by the impact of ' corpuscles. '

The reason then why it seems paradoxical to make the very existence of truth
depend on its ' discovery ' by us, is that in some cases there ensues upon the dis-
covery a transvaluation of our former values, which are now re-valued as ' false,'
while the new ' truth ' is antedated as having been true all along. This, however,
is conditioned by the special character of the case, and would have been impos-
sible but for the human attempt to verify the claim. When what is ' discovered '
is gold in a rock, it is supposed to have been there ' all along ' ; when it is a burglar
in a house, oiu- common-sense rejects such antedating. So the whole distinc-
tion remains within the human evaluation of truth, and affords no occasion for
attributing to ' truth ' any real independence of human cognition : the attempt
to do so really misrepresents our procedure ; it is a mere error of abstraction to
think that because a ' truth ' may be judged ' independent ' after human manipu-
lation, it is so per se, irrespectively of the procedure to which it owes its ' inde-
pendent ' existence. And to infer further that therefore logic should wholly
abstract from the human side in knowing, is exactly like arguing that because
children grow ' independent ' of their parents, they must be conceived as essenti-
ally independent, and must have been so ' all along. '

158 STUDIES IN HUMANISM

We now find ourselves in a position to lay down some
Humanist definitions. Truth we may define as logical
value, and a claim to truth as a claim to possess such
value. The validation of such claims proceeds, we hold,
by the pragmatic test, i.e. by experience of their effect
upon the bodies of established truth which they affect. It
is evident that in this sense truth will admit of degrees,
extending from the humble truth which satisfies some
purpose, even though it only be the lowly purpose of some
subordinate end, to that ineffable ideal which would
satisfy every purpose and unify all endeavours. But the
main emphasis will clearly fall on the former : for to
perfect truth we do not yet attain, and after all even the
humblest truth may hold its ground without suffering
rejection. No truth, moreover, can do more than do its
duty and fulfil its function.

These definitions should have sufficiently borne out
the claim made at the beginning (p. 142), that the
pragmatic view of truth unifies experience and rationalizes
the classification of the normative sciences ; but it may
not be amiss to add a few words on both these topics.
That, in the first place, the conception of the logical
judgment as a form of valuation connects it with our other
valuations, and represents it as an integral part of the
€(f)€at<; Tov dyaOov, of the purposive reaction upon the
universe which bestows dignity and grandeur upon the
struggle of human life is, I take it, evident. The theoretic
importance of this conception is capital. It is easily and
absolutely fatal to every form of Naturalism. For if
every ' fact ' upon which any naturalistic system relies is
at bottom a valuation, arrived at by selection from
a larger whole, by rejection of what seemed irrelevant, and
by purposive manipulation of what seemed important,
there is a manifest absurdity in eliminating the human
reference from results which have implied it at every step.
The Humanist doctrine, therefore, affords a protection

V THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH 159

against Naturalism which ought to be the more appreciated
by those interested in taking a ' spiritual ' view of life now
that it has become pretty clear that the protection
afforded by idealistic absolutism is quite illusory. For
the ' spiritual nature of the Absolute ' does nothing to
succour the human aspirations strangled in the coils of
materialism : * absolute spirit ' need merely be conceived
naturalistically to become as impotent to aid the theologian
and the moralist as it has long been seen to be to help
the scientist.^

The unification of logic with the other normative
sciences is even more valuable practically than theoreti-
cally. For it vindicates man's right to present his claims
upon the universe in their integrity, as a demand not for
Truth alone, but for Goodness, Beauty, and Happiness as
well, commingled with each other in a fusion one and
indiscerptible ; and what perhaps is for the moment more
important still, it justifies our efforts to bring about such
a union as we desire. Whether this ideal can be
attained cannot, of course, be certainly predicted ; but
a philosophy which gives us the right to aspire, and
inspires us with the daring to attempt, is surely a
great improvement on monisms which, like Spinoza's,
essay to crush us with blank and illogical denials of
the relevance of human valuations to the truth of
things.

In technical philosophy, however, it is good form to
profess more interest in the formal relations of the
sciences than in the cosmic claims and destinies of man,
and so we may hasten to point out the signal aid which
Humanism affords to a symmetrical classification of the
sciences. If truth also is a valuation, we can understand
why logic should attempt normative judgments, like ethics
and aesthetics : if all the natural sciences make use of
logical judgments and lay claim to logical values, we can
understand also how and why the normative sciences
should have dominion over them. And lastly, we find
that the antithetical valuations and the distinction

^ Essay xii. § 5.

i6o STUDIES IN HUMANISM v

between claims and their selection into norms run
through all the normative sciences in a perfectly
analogous way. Just as not everything is true which
claims truth, so not everything is good or right or
beautiful which claims to be so, while ultimately all these
claims are judged by their relation to the perfect harmony
which forms our final aspiration.

This essay was pledged at the outset to conclude with
a twofold challenge, and now that it has set forth some of
the advantages proffered by the pragmatic view of truth,
we must revert to this challenge, in a spirit not of conten-
tiousness so much as of anxious inquiry. For it is to be
feared that a really resolute adherent of the intellectualist
tradition would be unmoved and unconvinced by anything
we, or any one, could say. He would simply close his eyes
and seal his ears, and recite his creed. And perhaps no
man yet was ever convinced of philosophic truth against
his will. But there are beginning to be signs (and even
wonders) that our intellectualism is growing less resolute.
So perhaps even those who are not yet willing to
face the new solutions can be brought to see the gaps
in the old. If therefore we bring these to their notice
very humbly, but very persistently, we may enable them
to see that the old intellectualism has left its victims
unprovided with answers to two momentous questions.
Let us ask, therefore, how, upon its assumptions, they
propose (i) to evaluate a claim to truth, and (2) to dis-
criminate between such a claim and an established truth ?
These two questions constitute the first part of my
challenge. They are, clearly, good questions, and such
that from any theory of knowledge with pretensions to
completeness an answer may fairly be demanded. And
if such an answer exists, it is so vital to the whole case
of intellectualism, that we may fairly require it to be pro-
duced. If it is not produced, we will be patient, and hope
that some day we may be vouchsafed a revelation of

V THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH i6i

esoteric truth ; but human nature is weak, and the longer
the delay the stronger will grow the suspicion that there
is nothing to produce.

The second part of our challenge refers to the intel-
lectualist's rejection of our solution. If we are so very
wrong in our very plain and positive assertion that the
truth (validity) of a truth (claim) is tested and established
by the value of its consequences, there ought surely to be
no difficulty about producing abundant cases in which the
truth (validity) of a doubtful assertion is established in
some other way. I would ask, therefore, for the favour
of one clear case of this kind} And I make only one
stipulation. It should be a case in which there really
was a question, so that the true answer might have, before
examination, turned out false. For without this proviso
we should get no illustration of actual knowing, such as
was contemplated by the pragmatist, whose theory pro-
fesses to discriminate cases in which there is a real
chance of acquiring truth and a real risk of falling into
falsity. If on the other hand specimens merely of
indubitable or verbal truths were adduced, and it were
asserted that these were true not because they were
useful, but simply because they were true, we should end
merely in a wrangle about the historical pedigree of the
truth. We should contend that it was at one time doubtful,
and accepted as true because of its tested utility : our
opponent would dispute our derivation and assert that it
had always been true. We should agree that it was now
indisputable, we should disagree about the origin of this
feature ; and the past history would usually be too little
known to establish either view. And so we should get
no nearer to a settlement.

By observing on the other hand truth in the making,
inferences may be drawn to the nature of truth already
made. And whether truth is by nature pragmatic, or
whether this is a foul aspersion on her character, it is

1 Prof. Taylor attempted to answer an earlier form of this challenge in Mind,
N.S. No. 57. My reply in N.S. No. 59, entitled ' Pragmatism and Pseudo-
Pragmatism," showed that he had misunderstood even the elementary 'principle
of Peirce. '

i62 STUDIES IN HUMANISM v

surely most desirable that this point should be settled.
Hitherto the chief obstacle to such a decision has been
the fact that while in public (and still more in private)
there has been much misconception, misrepresentation
and abuse of our views, there have been no serious
attempts to contest directly, unequivocally, and outright,
any of our cardinal assertions.^ And what perhaps is
still more singular, our critics have been completely
reticent as to what alternative solutions to the issues
raised they felt themselves in a position to propound.
They have not put forward either any account of truth
which can be said ultimately to have a meaning, or one
that renders it possible to discriminate between the ' true '
and the ' false.' The whole situation is so strange, and
so discreditable to the prestige of philosophy, that it is
earnestly to be hoped that of the many renowned
logicians who so vehemently differ from us some should
at length see (and show us !) their way to refute these
' heresies,' as clearly and articulately as their ^u/^oeiSe? ^
permits their <f)t\6(ro(f>ov,^ and as boldly as their <piX6ao(jiov
permits their OvfioetSi'i, to express itself.

^ Prof. Taylor has now supplied this desideratum, by denying that psychology
has any relevance to logic {Phil. Rev. xiv. pp. 267, 287). Yet immediately after
(p. 287) he feels constrained to argue that the efficient cause of his accepting
any belief as true is a specific form of emotion ! Surely the fact that no truth
can be accepted without this feeling constitutes a pretty substantial connexion
between psychology and logic. Cp. Essay iii.

2 The ' spirited ' and ' philosophic ' parts of the soul, according to Plato.

VI
THE NATURE OF TRUTH ^

ARGUMENT

I. The making of ideals is vain if they are divorced from human life. II.
Mr. Joachim's abstraction from the human side of truth. III. The
consequent failure of his 'ideal.' IV. Truth and error in the Hegelian
'Dialectic' The ' concrete ' universal really abstract. Scientific 'laws'
truly concrete and not timeless, as alleged. The chasm between the
human and the ideal in intellectualist epistemology. V. Contrast with
the Humanist solution. The 'correspondence' and the 'independence'
view of truth. Both are inevitable for intellectualism, as is the scepticism
in which they end.

Of all the animals that creep and breathe upon the earth
man is the most iconoclastic — because he is also the most
iconoplastic. He is ever engaged in forming ideals for
his delectation and worship, and continually discovering
his worship to be idolatry and shattering his own crea-
tions.

The reason for this absurdly wasteful procedure is
always the same. The ideal has been constructed, the
idol has been set up, too uncritically. Too little care
has been devoted to the foundations of the ideal to build
upon them an enduring structure. The requirements
which an ideal must satisfy have been ignored. Yet
these requirements are simple. They may be formulated
as follows : —

I. The ideal must be attainable by a thought which
starts from our actual human standpoint.

^ This essay appeared, as a review of Mr. H. H. Joachim's book with the
same title, in the Journal of Philosophy, iii. 20 (27th Sept. 1906). It has been
somewhat expanded.

163

i64 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vi

2. When constructed it must be relevant to actual
human life.

3. The ideal must be realizable by the development
of man's actual life.

4. Yet it must have ' independent ' authority over
actual human life. Or, more briefly, the ideal must (a)
be an ideal for man, and yet (b) have authority over man.

Unless the first condition is complied with, it is
evident that the ideal will be the arbitrary creation of a
fancy which uses the actual only as a jumping-off place
into cloudlands and dreamlands. And any ideal, which
is arrived at thus per saltuin, is bound to reveal its illusory
nature so soon as an attempt is made to get back from the
ideal to the actual, i.e. to apply the ideal to human life.
We then find that we cannot get back from the standpoint
of the ideal ; with its glamour in our eyes the actual
seems hideous and distorted, alien and unintelligible.
Whereat, enraged, we may feel tempted to pronounce, not
the ideal, but the actual, radically false and vicious, and to
build out our ' ideal ' into a veritable paradise of fools.

Unless the second condition is complied with, our
ideal becomes non-functional, and therefore really mean-
ingless. A real ideal for man must be applicable to the
woiid of man's experience. An ideal which is not so
applicable is no ideal for man, even though it might
entrance angels and redeem Absolutes. And clearly an
ideal which has been reached by a jump is pretty certain
to prove thus inapplicable. As it was not reached by a
gradual approach from the actual, it cannot return to the
actual world and enlighten its gropings. It owed its
being to invalid fancy ; it owes its application to an
irrational fiat.

Unless the third condition is complied with the ideal
loses its compelling power. The impossible is no source
of obligation, no centre of attraction : nor is it rational to
aim at its attainment. The notion that an ideal would
not be an ideal if it were realizable, is a false inference
from the fact that ideals are progressive, and expand as
actuality approaches the level of what once seemed the

VI THE NATURE OF TRUTH 165

ideal. It overlooks the fact that throughout this whole
process the ideal has to be conceived as essentially
realizable. If this belief in its possibility failed us, our
devotion would at once be stultified.

It is, however, to the fourth condition that the other
three have usually been sacrificed. Ideals have been
unnaturally projected into a non-human sphere, they have
been rendered inefficacious and impossible by being dis-
sociated from human life, in order to guarantee their
independence and to enhance their authority. That this
procedure is self-defeating has already been explained.
It may be shown also to rest on radically false con-
ceptions of the authority and ' independence ' of ideals.
Their * authority ' must not be conceived as imposed on
man ; it must be freely constituted and recognized by
him. Nor can their ' independence ' be conceived as
absolute ; it cannot mean absence of relation to human
life. It can at most be relative, a tentative simplification
of the actual facts, an exclusion of this or that un-
important circumstance, of this or that discrepant desire,
of this or that discordant claim. But to set up an
ideal wholly independent of terrestrial conditions, human
psychology, and individual claims, to argue that because
experience shows that some such features may be set
aside, all may in a body be excluded a priori^ seems
merely to exemplify the fallacy of ' composition.' It
should never be forgotten that in any actually working
ideal the ' independence ' is functional, and strictly limited
to the sense and extent which its efficacy requires.

These reflections have not been wholly inspired by
Mr. Joachim's interesting and instructive essay, but they
find in it abundant illustration. It is always an affecting
spectacle to behold the good man conscientiously practis-
ing the idol-breaking art upon the idols of his soul, but
the total failure of Mr. Joachim's investigation of the
nature of truth, which he himself confesses in such hand-

i66 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vi

some terms (pp. 1 71-180), might have been predicted by
any one who had examined the functioning of human
ideals.

Mr. Joachim has courted failure by the fundamental
assumptions which pervade his ideal of Truth.

(i) He has assumed that the ' Critical ' question is out
of date. Nowhere does he betray any consciousness of
the need for asking, * How can I know all this that I have
assumed ? How are the facts assumed compatible with
my knowing them ? ' He has not in consequence raised
the question how his ideal was arrived at.

(2) He has thereby been enabled to assume an im-
possible standpoint, without realizing until it was too
late that nothing could be said from it that was in the
least degree relevant to the facts of human life. Assuming
that ' the nature of truth ' concerned " the character of an
ideally complete experience," and not the actual procedures
of human minds, he inevitably lays it down that " there
can be one and only one such experience : or only one
significant whole the significance of which is self-con-
tained in the sense required. For it is absolute self-
fulfilment, absolutely self-contained significance, that is
postulated ; and nothing short of absolute individuality —
nothing short of tJie completely whole experience — can
satisfy this postulate. And human knowledge, not merely
fny knowledge or yours, but the best and fullest knowledge
in the world at any stage of its development — is clearly
not a significant whole in this ideally complete sense.
Hence the truth is — -from the point of view of the human
intelligence — an Ideal, and an Ideal which can never
as such, or in its completeness, be actual as human
experience." ^

(3) Having assumed such an ideal, he is compelled to
abstract, as far as possible, from everything human, real,
and concrete. But ultimately this abstraction proves

1 Pp. 78-9. The ideal described is clearly not an ideal for man. And,
naturally, Mr. Joachim finds the resources of human language inadequate to
describe it. So on p. 83 n. he declares that though he calls it 'experience,' the
word is 'unsatisfactory,' and only used because 'God' would be 'misleading,'
and ' the Absolute ' and ' the Idea ' have become bywords.

VI THE NATURE OF TRUTH 167

impracticable, and when at last his conception of truth is
brought into contact with the fact of human error, its
breakdown is as irretrievable as it was inevitable : for it
is the collapse into its interior emptiness of the bubble
of a false ideal under pressure from the real it had
scouted.

That Mr. Joachim has really made all these assump-
tions can be made plain in his own words. He thus
describes on p. 178 his assumption of the standpoint
" That the truth itself is one and whole and complete,
and that all thinking and all experience moves within its
recognition and subject to its manifest authority ; this I
have never doubted." Perhaps if he had been more
willing, not necessarily to doubt, but, let us say, to
examine, this assumption, he would not have been forced
to doubt so much in the end. For it was decidedly
uncritical thus to rule out the question of whence came
the features in the ideal he postulated. It was also by
definition that he had ruled out the conception of truth
as a human ideal. Hence it was quite superfluous to
state in the preface that he was not going to discuss
the Humanist conception of truth. He could not : from
his point of view the Humanist position was invisible,
and was bound to seem " a denial of truth altogether."

From Mr. Joachim's standpoint human knowing
could not possibly appear as anything but an inexplicable
falling away from the serenity, purity, and perfection of
* the Ideal,' as a chaos of 'unreal abstractions' which it is
his duty 'to do his best to discredit' (p. 59). Or, as he
says more fully (pp. 167-8), "The differences of this and
that knowing mind — a fortiori, the confused mass of
idiosyncrasies which together distinguish this ' person ' or
'self from that — are recognized only to be set aside and,
if necessary, discounted. They are accidental imperfec-
tions, superficial irregularities, in the medium through
which truth is reflected ; limitations in the vessels
through which knowledge is poured. They are, so to
say, bubbles on the stream of knowledge ; and the
passing show of arbitrary variation, which they create on

i68 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vi

the surface, leaves the depths untroubled — a current
uniform and timeless. My and your thinking, my and
your self, the particular temporal processes, and the
extreme self-substantiation of the finite * modes ' which is
error in its full discordance : these are incidents somehow ^
connected with the known truth, but they themselves
and the manner of their connexion are excluded from the
theory of knowledge." ^

The theory of knowledge, then, " studies the known truth
qua timeless and universal" (p. i68), and the judgments
of science cannot be " concerned with the concrete
thinking of the individual mind qua ' this ' or ' that,' qua
differentiated by the idiosyncrasies developed through its
particular psychological history" (p. 93), "in all the
accidental and confused psychical setting" (p. 115).

Or lastly and most frankly (p. 1 18), " I do not inquire
how the logician can pass from the ' psychological
individual ' to the ' logical subject,' from this actual
thinking (with all its psychical machinery and particular
setting) to the thought which claims truth as affirming
universal meaning. The logician, I am convinced, never
really starts with this individual thinker in the sense
supposed ; and, if he did, the passage from this psycho-
logical fiction to the subject of knowledge would be
impossible."

It is clear that Mr. Joachim at any rate has never
started with * this individual thinker,' but equally so

^ The magic word, to which the logic, like the metaphysic, of intellectualism
always in the end appeals, when its false abstractions fail ! A critic's brutal
candour is tempted to substitute Humpty Dumpty's favourite word ' Nohow ! '
in all such passages.

■^ Mr. Joachim has protested against my use of this passage in Mind, N.S.
No. 63, p. 412, and declared that it expresses a view he is attacking. It is true
that as a whole he does not seem entirely satisfied with it, but I cannot see that any
injustice was done him by quoting part of it as illustrating a general difficulty which
IS common to him and it. His (very friendly) ' attack ' on it appears to concern
only a part I did not quote, viz. the verbal question whether what has got into
a mess is to be called ' metaphysics ' or ' theory of knowledge,' and if the latter,
whether ' metaphysics ' may be invoked to come to the rescue. He rightly
objects that the difficulty cannot be evaded thus. But on the main question I
was illustrating from him, as to how terrestrial error is compatible with the celestial
'ideal,' he merely remarks (p. 169) that "we must be able to show both the
extreme opposition a7id the overcoming of it, as essential moments in that self-
fulfilment." Aye, but what is this but an unfulfilled postulate on his own
showing?

VI THE NATURE OF TRUTH 169

that he never gets to him. He has, like Plato, assumed
his * logical ' standpoint, and never doubts, even when it
proves unworkable, that the discrepancy of psychical fact
is mere irrelevance and confusion. " We have been
demanding all along," he says (p. 82), "an entire reversal
of this attitude " (of starting from the actual). "In our
view it is the Ideal which is solid and substantial and
fully actual. The finite experiences are rooted in the
Ideal. They share its actuality^ and draw from it what-
ever being and conceivability they possess. It is a
perverse attitude to condemn the Ideal because the con-
ditions under which finite experiences exhibit their
fragmentary activity do not as such restrict its being,
or to deny that it is conceivable, because the conceiva-
bility of such incomplete expressions is too confused and
turbid to apply to it."

Ill

What, then, is this standpoint of the Ideal ? Page y6
tells us that " Truth in its essential nature is that systematic
coherence which is the character of a significant whole.
A ' significant whole ' is an organized individual ex-
perience, self-fulfilling and self-fulfilled. Its organization
is the process of its self-fulfilment, and the concrete
manifestation of its individuality."

Brave words, if only the standpoint of * the Ideal '
could be maintained, if only the 'individual thinker'
could be wholly dismissed from the inquiry ! Unluckily
he cannot.

The tree of knowledge cannot be guarded against
human profanation, even in the logician's paradise, once
it is ' somehow * revealed to man. Nay, the logician is
ultimately driven out by the diabolical machinations of
" the dual nature of human experience," which has " its
universality and independence and yet also its individuality
and its dependence on personal and private conditions "
(p. 29). "Truth, beauty, goodness are timeless, universal,

^ This is how Mr. Joachim glides over the ' participation ' difficulty. Plato
at least perceived its seriousness.

170 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vi

independent structures ; and yet also it is essential to
them to be manifested in the thinking of finite subjects,
in the actions and volitions of perishing agents" (p. 163).
They " appear in the actual world and exist in finite
experience . . , and their life (at least on one side of
itself) is judgment, emotion, volition — the processes and
activities of finite individuals. Truth, if it is to he /or me,
must enter into my intellectual endeavour," however
' independent ' it is " of the process by which / come to
know it" (p. 21).

No wonder * human experience ' is ' paradoxical '
(p. 23), and that' in the end its 'dual nature' is too
much for * the Ideal ' ! It has no room for Error ; and
yet Error inexplicably exists. Thus Error becomes the
" declaration of independence " of the finite, something
utterly ' unthinkable ' " where that which declares is
nothing real and nothing real is declared" (p. 163).

So ' the Ideal of coherence ' " suffers shipwreck at the
very entrance of the harbour" (p. 171). "It must render
intelligible ' the dual nature of human experience ' " (p.
1 70) ; it fails to meet ' demands ' which " both must be
and cannot be completely satisfied" (p. 171). The whole
" voyage ends in disaster, and a disaster which is inevit-
able ' (p. 171).

It would be ungenerous in those who declined to
commit themselves to the ill-found craft which Mr.
Joachim has gallantly navigated to foredoomed failure
to crow over this catastrophe ; ^ but it is permissible to
point out why it was inevitable from the start.

The whole ideal, despite its protestations of ' concrete-
ness ' and aspirations towards a ' self-fulfilling individuality,'
rested all along on an unjustified abstraction from the
most essential features of the only knowledge and truth
we are able or concerned to attain and examine. As
Prof Stout says,^ " The only knowing with which we are
primarily acquainted is knowing on the part of individuals,

' But in view of it Mr. Bradley's boasting about tlie security of ' Jericho '
seems particularly misplaced ! Cp. Essay iv. § 5.
2 Arist. Soc. Proc. 1905-6, p. 350.

VI THE NATURE OF TRUTH 171

of empirical, historical selves." All actual truth is human,
all actual knowing is pervaded through and through by
the purposes, interests, emotions, and volitions of a human
personality. Mr. Joachim had no right to treat these
facts as distorting disturbances : they are the roots of the
tree of knowledge. He had no right to treat knowledge
as if it were impersonal : the ' personal equation ' is never
really eliminated even in science,^ and in philosophy the
attempt to abstract from its all-pervasive influence stands
self-condemned. He had no right to assume that to take
our knowledge in its full concreteness would be fatal to
its ' objectivity ' ; he should have studied how men proceed
from individual judgments to social agreements about
truth, and ultimately construct ideals which are intended
to guide our aspirations, but are at once bereft of their
significance when they lose touch with human knowing.

Mr. Joachim has had, of course, to pay the penalty of
these uncritical assumptions. He has failed to describe
anything at all resembling the actual processes of human
knowing. He has failed equally to portray the operations
of science. He has failed even to render his abstract
ideal self-supporting : it crumbles under its own weight ;
for all its claim to absoluteness it possesses no authority ;
for all its aspirations to ' coherence ' it does not cohere,
even in itself.

These defects, moreover, are closely intertwined.
Because he has assumed the absolute standpoint and
abstracted from the personal context of every judgment,
he can never seize the actual meaning of any judgment.
He cannot see that it lies in the use of the judgment, in
its relation to a cognitive end, in its adjustment to a
particular case, in its satisfaction of a need. By ignoring
(what is obvious from the opposite point of view) that
meaning depends on purpose and demands application,
he has restricted himself to potential meaning, and moves
in a world of impotent phantoms. It is only in such a
phantasmagoria of depersonalized, hypostasized abstrac-

^ Compare my discussion of another paper by Mr. Joachim in Mind, No. 71,
pp. 404-5-

172 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vi

tions that truth can appear timeless and unalterable, that
judgments can bear meaning in isolation (p. 90), and are
possessed of a ' truth ' which they ' affirm ' and ' demand '
(pp. 108-9), that thoughts move and live and expand out
of space and time (p. 176).

But these are all illusions incidental to an imprac-
ticable standpoint, and the whole Witches' Sabbath of the
Hegelian Dialectic is really started by the wanton and
impossible dehumanizing of knowledge.

The Hegelian Dialectic is essentially an attempt to
determine the concatenation of meanings per se and in
abstraction from their application and actual function,
and in a sense the culmination of all such attempts.
But it fails because it too has not realized that per se
' categories ' do not mean anything, and that the meaning
of a category lies in the purpose with which it is employed.
Hegel had perceived — and it is greatly to his credit that
he should have done so — that taken per se the ' higher '
abstractions were also the emptier : thus in the ' philo-
sophic ' {i.e. abstract) contemplation of thought there
seemed to occur a progressive loss of meaning, a gradual
evisceration of content, until the highest ' category ' of all,
' Being,' appeared to be de facto indistinguishable from
' nothing.' Seeing that this was wrong, Hegel set himself
to find a remedy for this disease of thought, and prescribed
his ' Dialectic ' as the way by which thought might
return to the concreteness of ' spirit' He perceived,
that is, that the concrete is really higher than the abstract,
and so demanded that a universal which was to be really
valuable should be conceived as ' concrete ' The ' con-
crete universal ' is thus a demand for a something to
rectify the error of abstraction. But unfortunately it does
not go far enough. For Hegel did not see (i) that his
problem was unreal ; and (2) that his solution of it was
illusory.

(i) The disease of thought which Hegel undertook to

VI THE NATURE OF TRUTH 173

cure does not really exist : it is a figment of the philoso-
phers, the product of a defective analysis of actual human
knowing. If we refrain from abstracting from the actual
functioning of thought, there is no need to evolve a
concrete universal, by the convolutions of the Dialectic.
For in their actual use all universals are concrete. For
they are applied to a concrete situation. And this is as
true of ' Being ' as of ' Spirit.' Whenever we actually
have occasion to predicate ' being,' i.e. to include anything
in that summum genus, we mean to relate it to the concrete
zvhole of reality, not to include it in an empty category.
And if the purpose of the train of thought which led to
the predication had not been abstracted from, this would
have been evident throughout. All abstractions are made
for a purpose, and are meant to be applied, and recover
full concreteness in their power over the particular cases
of their application. Their ' abstractness,' therefore, con-
stitutes no problem for a humanist theory of knowledge,
and the ' error of abstraction ' is cured simply by a
perception of the use of abstraction.

(2) Even if Hegel's difficulty had not been one of
those which one gets out of by never getting into, his
' concrete universal ' is no way out of it. In its unapplied
condition, it is never fully concrete. The ' Dialectic ' no
more gets back to the concrete individual, from which
the (purposive) process of abstraction started, than the
Platonic Idea. It stops short with the 'category' of
' Spirit,' and assumes that it applies to reality and cannot
be misapplied. But its application to concrete * spirits ' is
the real problem, seeing that an inapplicable ' category ' is
plainly unmeaning. Of this problem the Dialectic is no
solution ; indeed, it does not even suspect its existence.
Hence the * concrete universal's ' claim to be concrete,
is a mere ' bluff.' It is and remains a rank abstrac-
tion, because it has not comprehended the function of
abstractions. It has abstracted from the personal aspects
of the knowing process, without perceiving that in so
doing it has abolished its own raison d'etre. Nor is it
what it pretends to be in other respects. It is not even a

174 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vi

true universal, because it has no power over particulars ;
and for all its theoretical assurances, in practice it repels
them as confusing and irrational. Whereas tJie ' universals '
which are really functional and are used in actual knowing
are always particulars ^ i.e. they are applied to a ' this ' in a
' here ' and ' now!

Hence the Hegelian ' universal ' never occurs either in
ordinary or in scientific knowing. The * universals '
(' laws ') of the sciences live only in their application to
particular cases ; they try to formulate the habits of
things, and are intended to be rules which guide us in our
treatment of them. It is, therefore, the less important
half of the truth to assert (p. 1 1 o) that " scientific thought
moves in universals " and that " in the science of botany
a judgment of perception like ' this tree is green ' finds,
as such, no place." For in reality the universals are
applied universals, and the science of botany would be
valueless if it did not deal with the behaviour of particular
trees, nor would it value the more abstract judgments if
they did not show their pragmatic power by applying
to a greater number of ' particulars.' Our scientific pro-
cedure, in short, gives no sanction whatever to the
notion that universals which cannot be applied have
any value, and the alleged ' eternity ' of scientific truth
is merely an illusion engendered by the abstraction from
purpose.^

The Hegelian ' universal,' however, not merely mis-
represents the scientific ' law,' it no less distorts our vision
of the * particular.' An abstraction itself, it constructs
the bogey of ' the individual mind,' presumably in order
that something more monstrous than itself may deter us
from acknowledging plain facts. But its ' individual
mind ' is a figment, formed by expunging all values from
the concrete mind.' In actual minds the values are all
present, as psychical facts, with the ideals and the idiosyn-

1 As Prof. Hoernle neatly says, "Science only formulates its conceptions and
laws apart from their temporal setting in any given case, that it may be the
better able to understand and control the succession of phenomena in time"
[Mind, xiv. 329). Cp. Humanism, pp. 103-5 I Formal Logic, ch. xxi.

■^ Cp. Essay iii. § 14.

VI THE NATURE OF TRUTH 175

crasies, all capable of contributing harmoniously to the
conservation of the individual life.^

There is no occasion or temptation, therefore, to oppose
' particular ' to ' universal,' and to reject any of the mind's
actual contents as ' accidental,' ' irrelevant,' or ' confused.'
For one, that is, who really starts from the ' finite ex-
periences.' But it is only an amiable delusion of Mr.
Joachim's to imagine that he has tried to do so (p. 1 1 5).
His assumption of * the Ideal ' has really incapacitated
him from describing human experience as it is. He has
in reality dissevered it into a part which is (to his think-
ing) superhuman, and another which is despicable, if not
bestial. But the two will not cohere, nor even come into
contact, and between them his theory of knowledge
founders.

In other words, Mr. Joachim has contrived to reopen
an old wound that was never really healed. In every
absolutist theory of knowledge, when it is really thought
out to the end, there is and must be a dualistic chasm
gaping between the ' human ' and the ' absolute ' aspects
of truth. Across this chasm there is no bridge ; but the
mystic often fancies that he can be wafted across it on
the wings of desire. Mr. Joachim is too sceptical and too
honest to play such tricks, but the old mistakes have
conducted him to the old impasse. Once more the ideal
has been severed from its roots in the real ; once more it
has been incited to transcend our experience ; once more
it has refused to return to earth and to redeem it. It
is vain to protest (p. 62) that a " universal is not another
entity existing alongside of its particulars." He himself
has made it such, by refusing to conceive it as human and
as humanly inhabiting them.

If he will not conceive the universal as a human
instrument, as existing in and for its use, if he will insist
that it must be ' independent,' it must be so exalted as to
lose all real significance for us. Thus the old Aristotelian
protest against the Platonic Idea has still to be reiterated
against the Hegelian universal. If it holds aloof from

^ Cp. Essay iii. § 3.

176 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vi

human knowing, it manifestly fails, because it becomes a
vain duplication, which has no meaning or interest for us :
if it essays to deal with human knowing, it becomes an
inhuman monster which tries to absorb the human and,
still more manifestly, fails, and then revenges itself by
abusing and depreciating us. In neither case can the
human and the ideal be harmoniously combined, or their
' duality ' overcome. But this duality was produced by
the initial assumption of a non-human standpoint ; if the
inquiry had commenced by investigating how ' truths '
are verified and errors detected, no ' duality ' need ever
have arisen to bar the way.^

To discuss Mr. Joachim's standpoint really implies
the highest praise that could be bestowed on Mr. Joachim's
essay. For it means that having assumed it, he has
worked out its implications with consistency and rigour
to the bitter end. Indeed, it seems that of all the writers
of the ' Anglo -Hegelian ' school he has most firmly
grasped their central problem, most honestly faced their
difficulties, most clearly shown what their doctrines really
mean and to what they really lead. That his conclusions
should be welcome to all (or even to any) of the members
of the school is not, perhaps, to be expected ; but it is no
slight service to philosophy to have set the issue in so
clear a light. Other philosophers, who stand remote
enough to enjoy the light of Mr. Joachim's criticism
without being scorched by its fire, will appreciate that
service at its true value. Humanists, in particular,
will derive much instruction from the uncompromising
expression Mr. Joachim has given to an attitude dia-
metrically opposed to theirs. They will note with satis-
faction how close is the parallel, and how complete the
antithesis, between him and them on all essential points,
and regard this as testimony to the inner consistency

1 Cp. for all this the argument in Essays ii. §§ 16-18, and ill. §§ 17-18.

VI THE NATURE OF TRUTH 177

of rival views whose divergence springs from different
answers to the same question. They will rejoice that
Mr. Joachim has unequivocally expressed a multitude
of notions they had long suspected their opponents of
harbouring, and desired to see stated in cold print. Nor
will they regret the negative outcome of Mr. Joachim's
labours. On the contrary, the more extensively it is
recognized as the final breakdown of intellectualistic
attempts to explain ' how knowledge is possible ' with-
out regard to the actual functioning of knowledge in
human life, the better they will be pleased.

In view of the fundamental value of Mr. Joachim's
work it seems ungracious to allude to secondary blemishes.
But it is a pity that instead of starting from the simplest
form of the ' correspondence-with-reality ' view of truth,
he has altogether omitted to consider it. For it is in its
sensatiottalistic form, as referring thoughts to the test of
perceptions, that this view is most plausible and least
inadequate. Indeed, apart from ulterior interpretations,
it is plainly descriptive of processes which actually occur
in our knowing, and is not so much false as incomplete.
It ordinarily means no more than that when our
judgments anticipate perceptions, the perceptions do not
belie them.

Again, one feels that the most consistent attempt to
work out the notion of the * independence ' of reality on
intellectualistic lines, viz. that made by Messrs. Bertrand
Russell and G. E. Moore, is rejected rather than refuted
on pp. 51-55. At any rate the objections urged against
the theory seem to press equally upon that to which, in
spite of its collapse, Mr. Joachim remains attached : the
fundamental assumption is the same for both, viz. that
experiencing ought not to make a difference to the ' facts ' ;
so is their fundamental difficulty, that of getting this
' independent ' truth into relation with human minds after
it has been postulated. Now such a relation Jias to be
conceived as a ' correspondence ' somehow ; ^ and so it
would seem that in criticizing the correspondence

1 Cp. Essay iv. § 7.

178 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vi

notion Mr. Joachim has once more refuted his own
assumptions.^

This, indeed, would seem to be the conclusion of the
whole matter : when we find the logic of Mr. Joachim
and Mr. Russell failing just where that of Plato had
failed in the Theaetetus^ viz. over the existence of error,
and failing just for the same reason, viz, on account of
its wanton abstraction from the human knowing which
falls into error, failing just where that of Mr. Bradley had
failed, failing just where its failure was predicted ; ^ when
we find logicians unable to account for the empirical fact
of knowledge, and plunging deeper and deeper into the
quicksands of scepticism the more they try to explain
it, when inference becomes a ' paradox ' and a mystery
exceeding those of theology, when our reasoning has
to be treated as either ' irrational ' or extra-logical, and
when we contrast the fact to which Prof A. W. Moore
has justly drawn attention,^ that all the time our actual
knowledge is growing and progressively ameliorating the
lot of man, is it not high time that we should stop and
bethink ourselves of a possible alternative to a course
which is both fatal and ridiculous ? Has not the time
come when Kant's ' Copernican change of standpoint '
might at last be put into practice seriously, and when
Truth, instead of being offered up to idols and sacrificed
to ' ideals,' might at length be depicted in her human
beauty and simplicity ?

^ Of course the problem has, in both cases, been wrongly formulated.
Instead of asking, ' How can our judgments reveal independent facts ? ' we
ought to have inquired when and why and in virtue of what intrinsic peculiarities,
some of our judgments have this transcendent ' reference to an independent fact '
ascribed to them. It would then appear that the reason is pragmatic : those
judgments refer to 'independent facts' which have reached (relative) stability
and pragmatic trustworthiness.

2 Cp. Hutnanism, p. 48, and Essay iv. §§ 3-5.

^ The Fu?ictional versus the Representational Theory of Knowledge in Lockers
Essay, ch. i.

VII
THE MAKING OF TRUTH

ARGUMENT

§ I. The problem of relating 'truth' to 'fact.' Difficulties of conceiving
' fact ' as ' independent ' of our knowing : {a) The paradoxes of realism ;
{i) the additional contradictions of rationalism. The old assumptions
to be given up. (i) Truth is human ; {i) fact is not ♦ independent,'' but
(3) dependent and relative to our knowing. § 2. The problem of vali-
dating claims to truth, and avoiding error. § 3. Actual knowing our
starting-point : its seven features dominated by the pragmatic test of
truth. § 4. The fact of previous knowledge. § 5. The acceptance of
a basis of fact. The ambiguity of fact : ' real ' fact evolved from
'primary,' by a process of selection. Individual variations as to
acceptance of fact. Fact never merely objective. § 6. The problem of
'objectivity.' It does not = unpleasantness. Pragmatic recognition of
' unpleasant fact ' and its motives, § 7. The place of interest and
purpose in our knowing. ' Goods ' and 'ends.' § 8. The validation of a
claim by its consequences. § 9. (a) Complete success ; {h) partial and
conditional success leading to methodological or practical ' truth ' ; (c)
failure, to be variously explained. § 10. The growth of knowledge a
growth of efficiency as well as of 'system,' but 'system' tested by its
efficiency. § 11. The making of truth in its application to the future
and the past. Antedating and re-valuing of truth. Can all truth be con-
ceived as 'made'? Difficulties. No 'creation out of nothing.' The
problems of ' previous knowledge ' and ' acceptance of fact.' § 12. The
' previous knowledge ' to be treated pragmatically. Uselessness of funda-
mental truths which cannot be known. § 13- The 'making of truth'
ipso facto a ' making of reality ' : (a) beliefs, ideas, and desires, as real
forces shaping the world ; (b) the efficacy of ideals ; (c) the dependence
of ' discovery ' upon endeavour. § 14. The further analysis of the factual
basis is really metaphysics, and pragmatic method need not be carried
so far. Conflict between the pragmatic value (i) of the real world of
common-sense, and (2) of the making of truth. But (2) is of superior
authority because (i) is a pragmatic construction. Also the real making
of reality may be analogous to our own.

§ I. The problem of 'the making of truth' issues from
the epistemological situation of the day at two points.
It arises out of two burning questions — (i) how ' truth ' is

179

i8o STUDIES IN HUMANISM vn

related to 'fact'; and (2) how 'truth' is discriminated
from ' error,' or how ' claims ' to truth are ' validated.'

On both these questions we have already abundantly
seen that the intellectualistic theories of knowledge have
argued themselves into a complete impasse. They have
put the questions in such a way that no answer is
possible. Their ' doctrines ' in the end amount merely
to confessions of failure. They cannot understand how
error is possible, or how, if it nevertheless exists, it can be
discriminated from truth ; and the only answer they can
give to the question how truth is made, is to declare that
it is never really made, but must pre-exist ready-made as
an eternal ideal (whether in a non-human mind, or a
supercelestial space, or in independent being, is a matter
of taste), to which our human truths have to approximate.
But when it turns out on their ozvn sJioiving that the
attainment of this ideal by us is eternally impossible, what
option have we but to treat this answer as no answer
at all ?

Again, they involve themselves in insuperable diffi-
culties as to the relation of truth to fact. They start
from an uncriticized assumption that truth must be the
apprehension of ' independent ' fact ; but they cannot
understand how ' fact ' can be ' independent ' of our
knowing. For how, if it is in any way dependent on us,
can it remain ' fact,' or ' truth ' remain true ? Can we
make ' truth ' and ' fact ' ? Away with the monstrous,
impious thought ! And yet it is too plain that our
human knowing seems to do these very things. And
that in what must seem to them the most dubious ways.
For it employs a multitude of arbitrary processes,
commended only by the psychological hold they have
over our mortal nature, and, when these are abstracted
from, it simply ceases to work. But how, Intellectualism
must ask, can such processes be more than subjective,
how dare we attribute them to an eternal mind, to an
independent reality ? It would be flat absurdity. But if
they are merely subjective, must they not hopelessly
vitiate the facts, distort the image of reality, and utterly

vn THE MAKING OF TRUTH i8i

unfit our ' truth ' to be the passionless mirror of reality
which it is assumed it has to be ?

Nor does it matter from what side this puzzle is
approached. If it is approached from the ' realist ' side,
we come upon the sheer, unmitigated, incredible paradoxes
that the 'independent fact' is (i) to be known by and
in a process which ex hypothesi it * transcends ' ; (2) to
be apprehended by a subjective activity which is confessed
to be largely, if not wholly, arbitrary ; that (3) this is to
make no difference zuhatsoever to the fact ; and (4) that we
are to know this also, to know, that is, that the ' correspond-
ence ' between the * fact,' as it is in itself and outside
our knowledge, and the fact as it appears in our knowledge,
is somehow perfect and complete !

If we come upon it from the absolutist side, we find
an ' eternal ideal of truth ' supervening upon, or perhaps
taking the place of, the * independent fact.' In the
former case we have, evidently, achieved nothing but a
complication of the problem. For it will now be a
question how * eternal truth ' is related to ' independent
fact,' and also how both of them are to be related to

* truth ' and * fact ' for us. But even in the latter case
there is no gain, because this ideal also is still supposed
to be ' independent ' of us and our doings. The difficul-
ties, therefore, remain precisely the same. Nay, they
are added to by the demand that we are to know that
the * correspondence ' between the human and the ideal
must be imperfect as well as perfect \ For the ideal has
been so constructed that our knowledge cannot fully
realize it, while yet it must fully realize it, in order that
we may assure ourselves of its * truth,' by observing its

* correspondence ' with the ideal ! Absolute truth, there-
fore, as conceived by absolutism, is not merely useless as
a criterion of our truth, because we do not possess it, and
cannot compare it with our truth, nor estimate where
and to what extent our truth falls short of its ' divine '
archetype ; it is not merely the adding of one more to
the multitude of (human) truth-conceptions which have to
be accommodated to one another, and out of which there

i82 STUDIES IN HUMANISM v«

has to be compounded the ' objective ' truth and the
' common ' world of practical life. It is positively noxious,
actively disruptive of the whole notion of truth, and
pregnant with self-destructive consequences.

Surely this situation, the development of which has
been traced in Essays ii., iii., iv., §§ 3-5 and 7-8, and vi.,
should be painful and irrational enough to stagger even
the most rationalistic faith in the sufficiency of intel-
lectualistic assumptions, and to impel it at least to
investigate the alternative conception of the problem which
Pragmatism has had the boldness to propound !

To us, of course, it will be as clear as daylight that
the old assumptions are wrong, proved to be wrong by
the absurdity of their consequences, and must be given
up. We shall infer frankly — (i) that whether or not
we have constructed a wholly unexceptionable theory
of knowledge, it is folly any longer to close one's eyes
to the importance and all - pervasiveness of subjective
activities in the making of truth. It must frankly be
admitted that truth is human truth, and incapable of
coming into being without human effort and agency ; that
human action is psychologically conditioned ; that, there-
fore, the concrete fulness of human interests, desires,
emotions, satisfactions, purposes, hopes, and fears is
relevant to the theory of knowledge and must not be
abstracted from.

(2) We shall perceive that the futile notion of a really
* independent ' truth and fact, which cannot be known or
related to us or to each other, even by the most gratuitous
of miracles, must be abandoned. If we insist on preserving
the word, it must at any rate be used no longer as a
label for the problem of relating the human to a non-
human which cannot possibly be related to it. It must,
at least, be interpreted pragmatically, as a term which
discriminates certain behaviours, which distinguishes
certain valuations, within the cognitive process which
evolves both ' truth ' and ' fact ' for man.^

(3) Instead of wasting our ingenuity, therefore, in

^ Cp. Essay xix. § lo.

vn THE MAKING OF TRUTH 183

trying to unite conceptions which we have ourselves
made contradictory, let us try the alternative adventure of
a thoroughly and consistently depetident trutJi, dependent,
that is, on human life and ministering to its needs, made
by us and referring to our experience, and evolving
everything called ' real ' and ' absolute ' and ' transcendent '
immanently in the course of its cognitive functioning.
It will have at least this great initial advantage over
theories which assume an antithesis between the human
and the * ideal ' or the ' real,' that its terms will not have
to be laboriously brought into relation with each other
and with human life.

§ 2. The second question, as to how claims to have
judged ' truly ' are to be made good, and how ' truth ' is
to be distinguished from * error,' raises the problem of the
' making of Truth' in a still more direct fashion. Indeed
it may in this form be said to be the pragmatic problem
par excellence^ and we have already taken some steps
towards its solution. We have seen the nature of the
distinction between * claim ' and ' validity ' and its im-
portance (Essay v.). We may also take it for granted
that as there is nothing in the claim itself to tell us
whether it is valid or not (Essay iii. § 18), the validation
of claims must depend on their consequences (Essay i.).
We have also vindicated the right of our actual human
knowledge to be considered by Logic in its full concrete-
ness (Essay iii.). We have noted, lastly, that the
collapse of the rationalistic theory of truth was to be
traced to its inveterate refusal to do this (Essays v., ii., vi.,
and iii.), and more particularly to recognize the problem
of error, and to help human reasoners to discriminate
between it and truth.

But all this is not enough to give us a positive grasp
of the making of truth. To do this we must analyse a
simple case of actual knowing in greater detail. But this
is difficult, not so much because of any intrinsic difficulty
of being aware of what we are doing, as because the con-
templation of actual human knowledge has fallen into
such disuse, and the simplest facts have been translated

i84 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vn

into the language of such weird fictions, that it is hard
to bespeak sufficient attention for what actually occurs.
Philosophers have strained their ingenuity to prove that
it is impossible, or at least indefensible, to test the simplest
truth in the most obvious manner, without dragging in
* the a priori Deduction of the Categories,' or the
' Dialectic of the Notion.' And all the while they are
oblivious of the very real presuppositions of our knowing,
and systematically exclude from their view the fact that
all our ' truths ' occur as personal affirmations in the life
of persons practically interested to attain truth and to
avoid error. Thus, when I take some one coming
towards me from a distance to be my brother, and
subsequently perceive that he is not, this correction of a
false claim seems an act of cognition well within the
powers of any man : it seems gratuitous to regard it as a
privilege reserved for the initiates of ' the higher Logic,'
the seers of 'the Self- development of the Absolute
Idea,' while totally ignoring such facts as that I was {a)
anxiously expecting my brother, but also {h) unfortunately
afflicted with short-sightedness.

§ 3. Let us begin, then, quite simply and innocently,
with our immediate experience, with the actual knowing,
just as we find it, of our own adult minds. This pro-
posal may seem hopelessly ' uncritical,' until we realize —
(i) that our actual minds are always the de facto starting-
points, from which, and with the aid of which, we work
hack to whatever ' starting-points ' we are pleased to call
' original ' and ' elementary * ; (2) that we always read
our actual minds into these other starting-points ; (3)
that no subtlety of analysis can ever penetrate to any
principles really certain and undisputable to start with ;
(4) that such principles are as unnecessary as they are
impossible, because we only need principles which will
work and grow more certain in their use, and that so
even initially defective principles, which are improved,
will turn out truer than the truest we could have started
with ; (5) that in all science our actual procedure is
' inductive,' experimental, postulatory, tentative, and that

vn THE MAKING OF TRUTH 185

the demonstrative form, into which the conclusions may
afterwards be put, is merely a trophy set up to mark the
victory. If we are met with reluctance to accept our
contentions, let us not delay in order to argue them out,
but proceed with the pragmatic confidence that, if they
are provisionally assumed, the usefulness of the resulting
view of knowledge will speedily establish them.

By tentatively assuming, then, this * common sense '
starting-point, we are enabled to observe that even one
of the simplest acts of knowing is quite a complicated
affair, because in it we are (i) using a mind which has
had some prior experience and possesses some knowledge,
and so (2) has acquired (what it greatly needs) some
basis in reality, which it is willing to accept as ^ fact'
because (3) it needs a 'platform' from which to operate
further on a situation which confronts it, in order (4) to
realize some purpose or to satisfy some interest, which
defines for it an ' end ' and constitutes for it a ' good.'
(5) It consequently experiments with the situation by
some voluntary interference, which may begin with a
tentative predication, and proceed by reasoned inferences,
but always, when completed, comes to a decision (judg-
ment ') and issues in an act. (6) It is guided by
the results (' consequences ') of this experiment, which
go to verify or to disprove its provisional basis, the
initial ' facts,' predications, conceptions, hypotheses, and
assumptions. Hence (7) if the results are satisfac-
tory, the reasoning employed is deemed to have been
pro tanto good, the results right, the operations performed
valid, while the conceptions used and the predications
made are judged tj'ue. Thus successful predication
extends the system of knowledge and enlarges the
borders of ' fact.' Reality is like an ancient oracle, and
does not respond until it is questioned. To attain
our responses we make free to use all the devices which
our whole nature suggests. But when they are attained,
the predications we judge to be ' true ' afford us fresh
revelations of reality. Thus Truth and Reality grow for
us together, in a single process, which is never one of

i86 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vii

bringing the mind into relation with a fundamentally
alien reality, but always one of improving and extending
an already existing system which we know.

Now this whole process is clearly dominated by the
pragmatic test of truth. The claims to truth involved
are validated by their consequences when used. Thus
Pragmatism as a logical method is merely the conscious
application of a natural procedure of our minds in actual
knowing. It merely proposes (i) to realize clearly the
nature of these facts, and of the risks and gains which
they involve, and (2) to simplify and reform logical theory
thereby.

§ 4. We may next consider some of these points in
greater detail. First as to the use of an already formed
mind (§ 3 (i) ). That empirically knowledge arises out of
pre-existing knowledge, that we never operate with a raw
and virgin mind, has been an epistemological common-
place ever since it was authoritatively enunciated by
Aristotle, though the paradox it involves with regard to
the first beginning of knowledge has never quite been
solved. For the present, however, we need only add
that the development of a mind is a \horo\igh\y personal
affair. Potential knowledge becomes actual, because of
the purposive activity of a knower who brings it to bear on
his interests, and uses it to realize his ends. Knowledge
does not grow by a mechanical necessity, nor by the
self-development of abstract ideas in a psychological
vacuum.

§ 5. Next, as to the acceptance of a basis of fact
(§ 3 (2) )• It is extraordinary that even the most blindly
hostile critic should have supposed Pragmatism to have
denied this. It has merely pointed out that the acceptance
must not be ignored, and that it is fatal to the chimera
of a ' fact ' for us existing quite * independently ' of our
' will.'

It is, however, important to note the ambiguity of
'■fact' (i) In the wider sense everything is 'fact,' qua
experienced, including imaginings, illusions, errors, hal-
lucinations. ' Fact ' in this sense is anterior to the

VII THE MAKING OF TRUTH 187

distinction of ' appearance ' and * reality,' and covers both.
To distinguish it we may call it * primary reality.' ^ For
though it is always perceived by us in ways defined, or
' vitiated,' by our past interests and acts (individual and
racial), and we are rarely conscious of all we read into
our data, there is undeniably a ' given ' in experience, or
rather a givenness about it. We never experience it as
purely given, and the nearer it comes to this the less we
value it, but in a sense this ' primary reality ' is important.
For it is the starting-point, and final touchstone, of all
our theories about reality, which have for their aim its
transformation. It may, certainly, in a sense, be called
' independent ' of us, if that comforts any one. For it is
certainly not ' made ' by us, but ' found.' But, as it
stands, we find it most unsatisfactory and set to work to
remake it and unmake it. It is not what we mean by
'real fact ' or 'true reality.' For, as immediately experi-
enced, it is a meaningless chaos, merely the raw material
of a cosmos, the stuff out of which real fact is made.
Thus the need of operating on it is the real justifi-
cation of our cognitive procedures.

These make it into (2) 'fact' in the stricter and more
familiar sense (with which alone scientific discussion is
concerned), by processes of analysis, selection and valuation,
which segregate the ' real ' from the ' apparent ' and the
' unreal.' It is only after such processes have worked upon
* primary reality ' that the distinction of ' appearance ' and
' reality ' appears, on which intellectualism seeks to base its
metaphysic. But it has failed to observe that the ground
it builds on is already hopelessly vitiated for the purpose
of erecting a temple to its idol, the ' satisfaction of pure
intellect.' For in this selection of ' real reality ' our
interests, desires, and emotions inevitably play a leading
part, and may even exercise an overpowering influence
fatal to our ulterior ends.

Individual minds differ as greatly in their acceptance of
' facts ' as in other respects. Some can never be got to
face unpleasant ' facts,' or will accept them only at the

' Cp. Humanism, pp. 192-3, and Essays viii. § 11, ix. § 4.

1 88 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vn

point of the sword. Most prefer to contemplate the
more agreeable alternative. A few are driven by their
fears unduly to accept the worse alternative. The
devices for ideally rectifying the harshnesses of actual
experience are endless. We console ourselves by pos-
tulating ideal realities, or extensions of reality, capable
of transfiguring the repugnant character of actual life.
We so conceive it, or interpret it, as to transform it into
a * good.' Or sometimes plain and generally recognized
' facts ' are disposed of by a sheer assertion of their
' unreality,' as is, e.g., the existence of pain by ' Christian
Science,' and of evil by absolutist metaphysics. It is
clear that psychologically all these attitudes towards
* fact ' more or less work, and so have a certain value.

It is clear also that the recognition of ' fact ' is by no
means a simple affair. ' Facts ' which can be excluded
from our lives, which do not interest us, which mean
nothing to us, which we cannot use, which are ineffective,
which have little bearing on practical life, tend to drop
into unreality. Our neglect, moreover, really tends to
make them unreal, just as, conversely, our preference for
the ideals we postulate makes them real, at least as
factors in human life.

Tne common notion, therefore, that * fact ' is some-
thing independent of our recognition, needs radical
revision, in the only sense of ' fact ' which is worth
disputing. It must be admitted that without a process
of selection by us, there are no real facts for us, and that
this selecting is immensely arbitrary. It would, perhaps,
be infinitely so, but for the limitations of human imagina-
tion and tenacity of purpose in operating on apparent fact.

§ 6. Through this atmosphere of emotional interest,
how shall we penetrate to any ' objective ' fact at all ?
Where shall we find the ' hard facts ' our forefathers
believed in, which are so whether we will them or not,
which extort recognition even from our sturdiest reluc-
tance, whose unpleasantness breaks our will and does not
befid to it ?

Certainly it may not be quite easy to discern the old

vn THE MAKING OF TRUTH 189

objective facts in their new dress, but that is a poor
reason for denying them the subjective atmosphere in
which they have to Hve.

(i) We may begin, however, by remarking on the
curious equating of ' objective ' with ' unpleasant ' facts
and truths. Its instinctive pessimism seems to imply a
mind which is so suspicious of fact that it can be driven
to recognize the reality of anything only by pains and
penalties, which is so narrowly contented with its
existing limitations as to be disposed to regard all
novelties as unwelcome intrusions, which has, in short,
to be forced into the presence of truth, and will not
go forth to seek it and embrace it. Such, certainly, is
not the frame of mind and temper of the pragmatist,
who prefers to conceive ' the objective ' as that which
he aims at and from, and contends that though ' facts '
may at times coerce, it is yet more essential to them to
be * accepted,' to be ' made,' and to be capable of -being
' remade'

(2) At all events, he thinks that the coerciveness
of ' fact ' has been enormously exaggerated by failure
to observe that it is never sheer coercion, but always
mitigated by his choice and acceptance, by which it ceases
to be de facto thrust upon him, and becomes de jure
' willed.' Even a forced move, he feels, is better than no
power to move at all ; and the game of life is not
wholly made up of forced moves.

(3) He finds no difficulty, therefore, in the conception
of unpleasant ' fact.' It indicates the better of two
disagreeable alternatives. And he can give good reasons
for accepting unpleasant fact, without on that account
conceiving ' fact ' as such to be unpleasant and coercive.
He may {a) accept it as the less unpleasant alternative,
and to avoid worse consequences, much as man may wear
spectacles rather than go blind. He may {b) prefer to
sacrifice a cherished prejudice rather than to deny, e.g.,
the evidence of his senses, or to renounce the use of his
* reason.' He may {c) accept it provisionally, without
regarding it as absolute, merely for the purposes of the

190 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vn

act or experiment he is contemplating. For to recognize
the pragmatic reality of an unpleasant fact means nothing
metaphysical, and entails no serious consequences. It
only implies willingness to accept it for the time being,
and is quite compatible with a disbelief in its ultimate
reality, and with its subsequent reduction to unreality or
illusion. Hence {d) such a pragmatic acceptance of
unpleasant fact does not impair our liberty of action ; it
is no obstacle to subsequent experimentation, which may
* discover ' the illusoriness of the presumed * fact' But
even where it does not lead to this, it may {e) be a
preliminary to making the unpleasant fact unreal^ and
putting something better in its place ; thus proving, in
another way, that it never was the absolute hard fact it
was supposed to be, but dependent on our inaction for
its continued existence.

Thus (4) it turns out that the existence of unpleasant
fact, so far from being an objection to the pragmatic
view of fact, is an indispensable ingredient in it. For it
supplies the motive for that transformation of the existing
order, for that unmaking of the real which has been made
amiss, which, with the making fact of the ideal and the
preservation of the precious, constitutes the essence of
our cognitive endeavour. To attain our 'objective,' the
' absolutely objective fact,' which would be absolutely
satisfactory,^ we need a ' platform ' whence to act and
aim. ' Objective fact ' is just such a platform. Only
there is no need to conceive it as anchored to the eternal
bottom of the flux of time : it floats, and so can move
with the times, and be adjusted to the occasion.

§ 7. As to § 3 (4), we have already seen that interest
and purpose can be eliminated from cognitive process
only at the cost of stopping it (Essay iii. § 7). A being
devoid of interests would not attend to anything that
happened, would not select or value one thing rather than
another, nor would any one thing make more of an
impression on its apathy than any other. Its mind and
its world would remain in the chaos of primary reality

^ Cp. Essay viii. § 12 ; and Humanism, pp. 198-203.

vn THE MAKING OF TRUTH 191

(§ 5), and resemble that of the 'Absolute'^ (if it can be
said to have a mind).

The human mind, of course, is wholly different. It is
full of interests, all of which are directly or indirectly
referable to the functions and purposes of life. Its
organization is biological and teleological, and in both
cases selective. If we except a few abnormal and morbid
processes such as idiocy, insanity, and dream, mental life
may be called wholly purposive ; that is, its functioning
is not intelligible without reference to actual or possible
purposes, even when it is not aiming at a definite, clearly-
envisaged end. Definite purposes are, it is true, of
gradual growth. They arise by selection, they crystallize
out from a magma of general interestedness and vaguely
purposive actions, as we realize our true vocation in life,
much as ' real ' reality was selected out of ' primary.'
Thus we become more and more clearly conscious of our
* ends,' and more and more definite in referring our
' goods ' to them. But this reference is rarely or never
carried through completely, because our nature is never
fully harmonized. And so our ' desires ' may continue to
hanker after ' goods ' which our ' reason ' cannot sanction
as conducive to our ends, or our intelligence may fail to
find the ' good ' means to our ends, and be deceived by
current valuations of goods which are really evils. Thus
the ' useful ' and the ' good ' tend to fall apart, and
' goods ' to seem incompatible. But properly and ideally,
there are no goods which are not related to the highest
Good, no values which are not goods, no truths which
are not values, and therefore, none which are not useful in
the widest sense.

§ 8. As to § 3(5), Experience is experiment, i.e. active.
We do not learn, we do not live, unless we try. Passivity,
mere acceptance, mere observation (could they be con-
ceived) would lead us nowhere, least of all to knowledge.

(i) Every judgment refers sooner or later to a
concrete situation which it analyses. In an ordinary
judgment of sense-perception, as, e.g.^ ' This is a chair,' the

^ Cp. Essay ix. § 5.

192 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vii

subject, the ' this,' denotes the product of a selection of the
relevant /ar^ of a given whole. The selection is arbitrary,
in that it ignores all the rest of the situation * given ' along
with the ' this.' If taken in abstraction, as intellectualism
loves to do, it seems wholly arbitrary^ unintelligible, and
indefensible. In the concrete, however, the judgment
zvJien made is always purposive, and its selection is
justified, or refuted, by the subsequent stages of the ideal
experiment. The ' objective control ' of the subjective
freedom to predicate is not effected by some uncom-
prehended pre-existing fact : it comes in the consequences
of acting out the predication. So our analyses are
arbitrary only if and in so far as we are not willing to
take their consequences upon us. Similarly the predicate,
which includes the ' this ' in a conceptual system already
established, is arbitrary in its selection. Why did we
say ' chair,' and not ' sofa ' or * stool ' ? To answer this
we must go on to test the predication.

For (2) every judgment is essentially an experiment,
which, to be tested, must be acted on. If it is really
true that ' this ' is a chair, it can be sat in. If it is a
hallucination, it cannot. If it is broken, it is not a chair
in the sense my interest demanded. For I made the
judgment under the prompting of a desire to sit.

If now I stop at this point, without acting on the
suggestion contained in the judgment, the claim to truth
involved in the assertion is never tested, and so cannot be
validated. Whether or not ' this ' was a chair, cannot be
known. If I consent to complete the experiment, the
consequences will determine whether my predication was
' true ' or ' false.' The ' this ' may not have been a chair
at all, but a false appearance. Or the antique article of
ornamental furniture which broke under my weight may
have been something too precious to be sat in. In either
case, the ' consequences ' not only decide the validity of
my judgment, but also alter my conception of reality.
In the one case I shall judge henceforth that reality is
such as to present me with illusory chairs ; in the other,
that it contains also chairs not to be sat in. This then is

VII THE MAKING OF TRUTH 193

what is meant by the pragmatic testing of a claim to
truth.^

§ 9. As to the reaction of the consequences of an
experimental predication upon its ' truth ' (§ 3 (6) ), the
simplest case is that (i) of a successful validation. If,
in the example of the last section, I can sit in the
' chair,' my confidence in my eyesight is confirmed and I
shall trouble little whether it ought not rather to have
been called a ' sofa ' or a ' stool.' Of course, however, if
my interest was not that of a mere sitter, but of a
collector or dealer in ancient furniture, my first judgment
may have been woefully inadequate, and may need to be
revised. ' Success,' therefore, in validating a ' truth,' is a
relative term, relative to the purpose with which the truth
was claimed. The ' same ' predication may be ' true ' for
me and * false ' for you, if our purposes are different. As
for a truth in the abstract, and relative to no purpose, it is
plainly unmeaning. Until some one asserts it, it cannot
become even a claim, and be tested, and cannot, therefore,
be validated. Hence the truth of ' the proposition ' ' S is
P,' when we affirm it on the strength of an actually
successful predication, is only potential. In applying it
to other cases we always take a risk. The next time
' this ' may not be a ' chair,' even though it may look the
* same ' as the first time. Hence even a fully successful
predication cannot be converted into an ' eternal truth '
without more ado. The empirical nature of reality is
such that we can never argue from one case to a similar
one, which tve take to be ' the same,' with absolute
assurance a priori ; hence no ' truth ' can ever be so
certain that it need not be verified, and may not mislead
us, when applied. But this only means that no truth
should be taken as unimprovable.

(2) Experiments, however, are rarely quite successful.
We may {a) have had to purchase the success we attain
by the use of artificial abstractions and simplifications, or
even downright fictions, and the uncertainty which this

^ Cp. Dewey's Logical Studies for the experimental nature of predication,
especially ch. vii.

194 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vii

imports into the ' truth ' of our conclusions will have to
be acknowledged. We shall, therefore, conceive ourselves
to have attained, not complete truths without a stain
upon their character, which there is no reason to doubt,
but only ' approximations to truth ' and ' working hypo-
theses,' which are, at most, ' good enough for practical
purposes.' And the principles we used we shall dub
methodological ' truths ' or ' fictions,' according to our bias.
And, clearly, the cognitive endeavour will not in this case
rest. We shall not have found a ' truth ' which fully
satisfies even our immediate purpose, but shall continue
the search for a more complete, precise, and satisfactory
result. In the former case, the cognitive interest of the
situation could be renewed only by a change or growth
of purpose leading to further judgments.

(3) The experiment may fail, and lead to unsatis-
factory results. The interpretation then may become
extremely complex. Either {a) we may put the blame
on our subjective manipulation, on our use of our cognitive
instruments. We may have observed wrongly. We may
have reasoned badly. We may have selected the wrong
conceptions. We may have had nothing but false con-
ceptions to select from, because our previous knowledge
was as a whole inadequate. Or we may be led to doubt
ip) the basis of fact which we assumed, or {c) the
practicability of the enterprise we were engaged in. In
either of the first two cases we shall feel entitled to try
again, with variations in our methods and assumptions ;
but repeated failure may finally force even the most
stubborn to desist from their purpose, or to reduce it to
a mere postulate of rationality which it is as yet impos-
sible to apply to actual experience. And, needless to say,
there will be much difference of opinion as to where, in
case of failure, the exact flaw lies, and how it may best
be remedied. Herein, however, lies one reason (among
many) why the discovery of truth is such a personal
affair. The discoverer is he who, by greater perseverance
or more ingenious manipulation, makes something out of
a situation which others had despaired of.

vii THE MAKING OF TRUTH 195

§ 10. We see, then, how truth is made, by human
operations on the data of human experience. Knowledge
grows in extent and in trustworthiness by successful
functioning, by the assimilation and incorporation of fresh
material by the previously existing bodies of knowledge.
These * systems ' are continually verifying themselves,
proving themselves true by their ' consequences,' by their
power to assimilate, predict and control fresh ' fact' But
the fresh fact is not only assimilated ; it also transforms.
The old truth looks different in the new light, and really
changes. It grows more powerful and efficient. Formally,
no doubt, it may be described as growing more ' coherent '
and more highly ' organized,' but this does not touch the
kernel of the situation. For the * coherence ' and the
* organization ' both exist in our eyes, and relatively to
our purposes : it is we who judge what they shall mean.
And what we judge them by is their conduciveness to
our ends, their effectiveness in harmonizing our experience.
Thus, here again, the intellectualist analysis of knowledge
fails to reach the really motive forces.

§ II. It is important, further, to point out that looking
forward the making of truth is clearly a continuous,
progressive, and cumulative process. For the satisfaction
of one cognitive purpose leads on to the formulation of
another ; a new truth, when established, naturally becomes
the presupposition of further explorations. And to this
process there would seem to be no actual end in sight,
because in practice we are always conscious of much that
we should like to know, if only we possessed the leisure
and the power. We can, however, conceive an ideal
completion of the making of truth, in the achievement of
a situation which would provoke no questions and so
would inspire no one with a purpose to remake it, and on
this ideal the name absolute truth may be bestowed.

Looking backwards, the situation, as might have been
expected, is less plain. In the first place there are
puzzles, which arise from the natural practice of re-valuing
superseded ' truths ' as ' errors,' and of antedatifig the new
truths as having been ' true all along.' So it may

196 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vn

be asked : ' What were these truths before they were
discovered ? ' This query is essentially analogous to the
child's question : ' Mother, what becomes of yesterday ? '
and by any one who has understood the phraseology of
time in the one case and of the making of truth in the
other, the difficulty will be seen to be merely verbal. If
' true ' means (as we have contended) ' valued by us,' of
course the new truth becomes true only when ' discovered ' ;
if it means ' valuable if discovered,' it was of course hypo-
thetically * true ' ; if, lastly, the question inquires whether
a past situation would not have been altered for the better^
if it had included a recognition of this truth, the answer
is : ' Yes, probably ; only unfortunately, it was not so
altered.' In none of these cases, however, are we dealing
with a situation which can be even intelligibly stated
apart from the human making of truth.^ Again, it is by
no means easy to say how far our present processes of
making truth are validly to be applied to the past, how
far all truth can be conceived as having been made by
the processes which we now see in operation.

(i) That we must try to conceive it thus is, indeed,
obvious. For why should we gratuitously assume that
the procedure by which ' truth ' is now being made differs
radically from that whereby truth initially came into
being ? Are we not bound to conceive, if possible, the
whole process as continuous, truth made, truth making,
and truth yet to be made, as successive stages in one and
the same endeavour ? And to a large extent it is clear
that this can be done, that the established truths, from
which our experiments now start, are of a like nature
with the truths we make, and were themselves made in
historical times.

(2) Before, however, we can generalize this procedure, we
have to remember that on our own showing, we disclaimed
the notion of making truth out of nothing. We did not
have recourse to the very dubious notion of theology
called ' creation out of nothing,' which no human opera-
tions ever exemplify. We avowed that our truths were

' Cp. p. 157 note, and Essay viii. § 5.

vn THE MAKING OF TRUTH 197

made out of previous truths, and built upon pre-existing
knowledge ; also that our procedure involved an initial
recognition of ' fact.'

(3) Here, then, would seem to be two serious, if
not fatal, limitations upon the claim of the pragmatic
' making of truth ' to have solved the mystery of know-
ledge. They will need, therefore, further examination,
though we may at once hasten to state that they cannot
affect the validity of what the pragmatic analysis pro-
fessed to do. It professed to show the reality and
importance of the human contribution to the making of
truth ; and this it has amply done. If it can carry us
further, and enable us to humanize our world completely,
so much the better. But this is more than it bargained
to do, and it remains to be seen how far it will carry us
into a comprehension also of the apparently non-human
conditions under which our manipulations must work.

§ 12. Now as regards the previous knowledge assumed
in the making of truth, it may be shown that there is no
need to treat it in any but a pragmatic way. For (i)
it seems quite arbitrary to deny that the truths which we
happen to assume in making new truths are the same in
kind as the very similar truths we make by their aid.
In many cases, indeed, we can show that these very
truths were made by earlier operations. There is, there-
fore, so far, nothing to hinder us from regarding the
volitional factors which actual knowing now exhibits, viz.
desire, interest, and purpose, as essential to the process
of knowing, and similarly the process by which new
truth is now made, viz. postulation, experiment, action, as
essential to the process of verification.

Moreover (2), even if we denied this, and tried to
find truths that had never been made, it would avail us
nothing. We never can get back to truths so funda-
mental that they cannot possibly be conceived as having
been made. There are no a priori truths which are
indisputable, as is shown by the mere fact that there
is not, and never has been, any agreement as to what
they are. All the ' a priori truths,' moreover, which are

198 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vir

commonly alleged, can be conceived as postulates sug-
gested by a previous situation.^

(3) Methodologically, therefore, it leads us nowhere
to assume that within the truth which is made there
exists an uncreate residuum or core of elementary truth,
which has not been made. For we can never get at it,
or know it. Hence, even if it existed, the theory of our
knowing could take no note of it. All truth, therefore,
must, methodologically, be treated as if it had been
' made.' For on this assumption alone can it reveal its
full significance. In so far, therefore, as Pragmatism does
not profess to be more than a method, it has no occasion
to modify or correct an account of truth which is
adequate to its purpose, for the sake of an objection
which is methodologically null.

(4) It seems a little hard on Pragmatism to expect
from it a solution of a difficulty which confronts alike all
theories of knowledge. In all of them the beginning
of knowledge is wrapped in mystery. It is a mystery,
however, which even now presses less severely on
Pragmatism than on its competitors. For the reason
that it is not a retrospective theory. Its significance
does not lie in its explanation of the past so much as
in its present attitude towards the future. The past is
dead and done with, practically speaking ; its deeds have
hardened into ' facts,' which are accepted, with or with-
out enthusiasm ; what it really concerns us to know is
how to act with a view to the future. And so like life,
and as befits a theory of human life. Pragmatism faces
towards the future. It can adopt, therefore, the motto
solvitur ainbtilando, and be content if it can conceive a
situation in which the problem would de facto have dis-
appeared. The other theories could not so calmly
welcome a ' psychological ' solution as ' logically ' satisfac-
tory. But then they still dream of ' theoretic ' solutions,
which are to be wholly ' independent ' of practice.

§ 1 3. The full consideration of the problem involved
in the initial ' acceptance of fact ' by our knowing will

^ Cp. ' Axioms as Postulates ' in Personal Idealism.

vii THE MAKING OF TRUTH 199

have to be reserved for the essay on ' Making of Reality,'
which will have to examine the metaphysical conclusions
to which the Pragmatic Method points. At present it
must suffice to show ( i ) that the ' making of truth ' is
necessarily and ipso facto also a ' making of reality ' ; and
(2) what precisely is the difficulty about accepting the
making of truth as a complete making also of reality.

(i) {a) It is clear, in the first place, that if our beliefs,
ideas, desires, wishes, etc., are really essential and integral
features in actual knowing, and if knowing really trans-
forms our experience, they must be treated as real forces,
which cannot be ignored by philosophy.^ They really
alter reality, to an extent which is quite familiar to * the
practical man,' but which, unfortunately, * philosophers '
do not yet seem to have quite adequately grasped, or to
have * reflected on ' to any purpose. Without, however,
going into endless detail about what ought to be quite
obvious, let us merely affirm that the ' realities ' of
civilized life are the embodiments of the ideas and desires
of civilized man, alike in their material and in their social
aspects, and that our present inability wholly to subdue
the material, in which we realize our ideas, is a singularly
poor reason for denying the difference between the
present condition of man's world and that of his miocene
ancestors.

{b) Human ideals and purposes are real forces, even
though they are not yet incorporated in institutions, and
made palpable in the rearrangements of bodies. For
they affect our actions, and our actions affect our world.

{c) Our knowledge of reality, at least, depends largely
on the character of our interests, wishes, and acts. If
it is true that the cognitive process must be started by
subjective interest which determines the direction of its
search, it is clear that unless we seek we shall not find,
nor ' discover ' realities we have not looked for. They
will consequently be missing in our picture of the world,
and will remain non-existent for us. To become real

^ Cp. Prof. Dewey's essay on ' Beliefs and Existences ' in The Infiuence of
Darwin on Philosophy, which makes this point very forcibl)'.

200 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vn

for us they (or cognate realities — for we do not always
discover just what we went forth to find, as witness Saul
and Columbus) must have become real objects of interest
hypothetically ; and as this making of ' objects of
interest ' is quite within our power, in a very real sense
their * discovery ' is a ' making of reality.' ^ Thus, in
general, the world as it now appears to us may be
regarded as the reflexion of our interests in life : it is
what we and our ancestors have, wisely or foolishly,
sought and known to make of our life, under the
limitations of our knowledge and our powers. And
that, of course, is little enough as compared with our
ideals, though a very great deal as compared with our
starting-point. It is enough, at any rate, to justify the
phrase * the making of reality ' as a consequence of the
making of truth. And it is evident also that just in so
far as the one is a consequence of the other, our remarks
about the presupposition of an already made ' truth '
will apply also to the presupposition of an already made
* reality.'

§ 14. The difficulty about conceiving this 'making of
reality,' which accompanies the ' making of truth,' as more
than ' subjective,' and as affording us a real insight into the
natu.'e of the cosmic process, lies in the fact that it is
complicated with the difficulty we have already recognized
in trying to conceive the making of truth as a completely
subjective process, which should yet be self-sufficient and
fully explanatory of the nature of knowledge (§ 11). It
is because the making of truth seemed to presuppose a
certain ' acceptance of fact,' which was indeed volitional
qua the ' acceptance ' and even optional, but left us with
a surd qua the ' fact,' that it seems impossible to claim
complete objectivity for the making of reality, and that
our knowing seems to many merely to select among
pre-existing facts those which we are interested to
' discover.'

It is inevitable, moreover, that the pre-existing facts,

^ For the reason why we distinguish between these two cases at all, see Essay
xix. § 5.

vn THE MAKING OF TRUTH 201

which the making, both of truth and of reality, seems to
presuppose as its condition, though, properly speaking, it
only implies the pre-existence of 'primary reality' (§ 5),
should be identified with the * real world ' of common-
sense, in which we find ourselves, and which we do not
seem to have made in any human sense. In other words,
our theory of knowledge is confronted at this point with
something which claims ontological validity, and is
requested to turn itself into a metaphysic in order to
deal with it.

This, of course, it may well refuse to do. It can insist
on remaining what it originally was, and has so far pro-
fessed to be, viz. a method of understanding the nature of
our knowledge. And we shall not be entitled to censure
it, however much we may regret its diffidence, and desire
it to show its power also in coping with our final
difficulties.

We ought, however, to be grateful, if it enables us to
perceive from what the difficulty really arises. It arises
from a conflict between pragmatic considerations, both of
which are worthy of respect. For (i) the belief in the
world theory of ordinary realism, in a ' real world ' into
which we are born, and which has existed ' independently '
of us for aeons before that event, and so cannot possibly
have been made by us or any man, has very high
pragmatic warrant. It is a theory which holds together
and explains our experience, and can be acted on with
very great success. It is adequate for almost all our
purposes. It works so well that it cannot be denied a
very high degree of truth.^

(2) On the other hand, it is equally plain that we
cannot deny the reality of our cognitive procedure and of
the human contribution it imports into the making of
reality. It, too, is a tried and tested truth. The two,
therefore, must somehow be reconciled, even though in so
doing we may have to reveal ultimate deficiencies in the
common-sense view of the world.

The first question to be raised is which of the two

' Cp. Essay xx. § 6.

202 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vii

pragmatically valuable truths should be taken as more
ultimate.

The decision, evidently, must be in favour of the
second. For the ' reality of the external world ' is not an
original datum of experience, and it is a confusion to
identify it with the ' primary reality* we recognized in § 5.
It cannot claim the dubious ' independence ' of the latter,
just because it is something better and more valuable
which has been ' made ' out of it. For it is a pragmatic
construction tvithin primary reality, the product, in fact,
of one of those processes of selection by which the chaos
is ordered. The real external world is the pragmatically
efficient part of our total experience, to which the
inefficient parts such as dreams, fancies, illusions, after-
images, etc., can, for most purposes, be referred. But
though this construction suffices for most practical
purposes, it fails to answer the question — how may
' reality ' be distinguished from a consistent dream ? And
seeing that experience presents us with transitions from an
apparently real (dream) world into one of superior reality,
how can we know that this process may not be repeated,
to the destruction of what now seems our ' real world ' ? ^

We must distinguish, therefore, between two questions
which have been confused — ( i ) ' Can the making of truth
be conceived as a making also of " primary reality " ? ' and
(2) ' Can it be conceived also as a making of the real
" external world " of ordinary life ? ' — and be prepared to
find that while the first formulates an impossible problem,^
an answer to the second may prove feasible. In any case,
however, it cannot be affirmed that our belief in the
metaphysical reality of our external world, which it is in
some sense, or in no sense, possible to ' make,' is of higher
authority than our belief in the reality of our making of
truth. The latter may pervade also forms of experience
other than that which gets its pragmatic backbone from
the former. Indeed, one cannot imagine desiring, purpos-
ing, and acting as ceasing to form part of our cognitive
procedure, so long as ' finite ' minds persist at all. All we

1 Cp. Essay xx. §§ 19-22. ^ Essay xix. § 7.

vir THE MAKING OF TRUTH 203

can say, therefore, is that so long as, and in so far as, our
experience is such as to be most conveniently organized
by the conception of a pre-existing real world (in a
relative sense), * independent ' of us, it will also be con-
venient to conceive it as having been to a large extent
' made ' before we took a part in the process.^

Nevertheless, it is quite possible (i) that this
' pragmatic ' recognition of the external world may not be
final, because it does not serve our ultimate purposes ; and
(2) that the human process of making reality may be a
valuable clue also to the making of the pragmatically real
world, because even though it was not made by us, it was
yet developed by processes closely analogous to our own
procedure, which this latter enables us to understand. If
so, we shall be able to combine the real * making of reality '
and the human ' making of reality ' under the same concep-
tion. But both of these suggestions must be left to later
essays to work out.^ Before we embark upon such adven-
turous constructions, we must finally dispose of the meta-
physical and religious pretensions of the Absolutism whose
theory of knowledge has ended in such egregious failure.

^ Cp. Riddles of the Sphinx, chap. ix. § 32.
2 Essays xix. and xx.

VIII

ABSOLUTE TRUTH AND ABSOLUTE
REALITY

Argument

I. The Conception of Absolute Truth. § I. The sceptical tendency of the

historical study of Thought is due to reflection on the falsifying of
human truths. § 2. The Ideal of an absolute truth as a standard to
give stability to human truths. § 3. But, being conceived as separate,
it turns out to be futile, (i) It guarantees nothing, and (2) it is
different in kind. § 4. It is also pernicious, as leading either to
scepticism or to stagnation. § 5. The real grovk^th of Truth is by a
constant revaluation of truths which are ' verified ' as well as falsified.
§ 6. The real meaning of ' absolute ' truth.

II. The Conception of Absohite Reality. § 7. The character of scientific
reality which absolute reality is supposed to guarantee. § 8. It is,
however, futile, because (i) its notion is no help to finding it de
facto, and (2) it must be kept away from our reality. § 9. Is it also

pernicious, as disintegrating human reality and discouraging efforts to
improve it. § 10. The real growth of reality never involves the notion
of absolute reality. § il. 'Primary' would be accepted as ultimate
reality by ' purely ' cognitive beings. § 12. 'Real' reality selected by
human interests. The real meaning of ' absolute ' reality.

I. THE CONCEPTION OF ABSOLUTE TRUTH

§ I. The Sceptical Tendency of the Historical Study of
Thought

The reflective student of the history of human know-
ledge is apt to receive an overwhelming impression of
the instability of opinion, of the mutability of beliefs, of
the vicissitudes of science, in short of the impermanence
of what is, or passes for, ' truth.' Despite the boastful
confidence of Platonically- minded system -builders that
they have ' erected monuments more perennial than

204

vm ABSOLUTE TRUTH AND REALITY 205

bronze ' and coerced ' eternal ' truth to abide immutably
within the flimsy shelters which their speculations have
erected, the universal flux of reality sways the world of
ideas even more rapidly and visibly than the world of
things. What truths have lasted like the Alps, or even
like the Pyramids ? All human truth, as it actually is
and historically has been, seems fallible and transitory.
It is of its nature to be liable to err, and of ours to
blind ourselves to this liability. The road to truth (if
such a thing there is) grows indiscernible amid the many
bypaths of error into which it branches off on either side,^
and whichever of these mazes men adopt, they plunge
into it as gaily, follow it as faithfully, and trust it as
implicitly, as if it were the one most certain highroad.
But only for a season. For sooner or later they weary
of a course that leads to nothing, and stop themselves
with a shock of distressed surprise at the discovery that
what they had so long taken to be ' true ' was really
• false.' And yet so strong is the dogmatic confidence
with which nature has endowed them, that they start
again almost at once, all but a very few of the wisest,
upon the futile quest of a truth which in the end always
eludes their human grasp.

Thus human truth cannot substantiate its claim to
absoluteness : the truths of past ages are at present
recognized as errors ; those of the present are on the way
to be so recognized. They can inspire us with no more
confidence, they ought to inspire us with far less, than
that with which exploded and superseded errors inspired
our forefathers, who in their day were equally con-
temptuous of the errors of an earlier age. We have no
right to hold that this universal process will be 'arrested
at this single point, and that our successors will find
reason to spare our present truths and shrink from
discarding them when they have had their day.

Nor can the feeling of conviction which has gathered

^ Cp. Poincar^, La Valeur de la Science, p. 142 : toute \€x'\\.€ particuliere peut
^videmment 6tre 6tendue d'une infinite de mani^res. Entre ces mille chemins qui
s'ouvrent devant nous, il faut faire un choix, au moins provisoire.

206 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vm

round our present ' truths ' guarantee them permanent
validity. All * truths ' claim to be ' true ' without a
hint of doubt, and come upon the scene with similar
assurance and similar assurances. And all alike evoke
the feeling of loyalty which truth - seeking men are
anxious to bestow upon whatever comes to them in the
guise of truth. But all too often our trust is woefully mis-
placed. The truths we trusted are transformed into hideous
errors in our hands, and after many bitter disappoint-
ments we are driven to grow wary, and even sceptical.

Thus our faith in the absoluteness of our truth grows
ever fainter, shrinks ever more into an unreasonable
instinct, until, in our most lucid intervals, we may even
come to doubt whether our ' truth ' is ever more than
the human fashion of the ruling fancy.

§ 2. The Conception of Absolute Truth

In this distress, for man by nature is the most credulous
of creatures, the thought of an absolute truth, serenely
transcending all this turmoil, so distinct in nature as to be
independent of the misfortunes and exempt from the vicis-
situdes of human truth, presents itself as a welcome refuge
from the assaults of scepticism. If such a thing can be
conceived, it will form a model for human truth to imitate,
a standard for evaluating our imperfect truths, and an
impregnable citadel into which no change can penetrate.
The wish is so urgent, the thought is so natural, that we
are not disposed to be critical, and it is no wonder that
it has become nearly universal. And yet when we force
ourselves really to scrutinize the habitation which our
hopes have built, we may have reason to fear that it is
founded on illusion, and results in disaster to the very
hopes to which it promised satisfaction.

The notion of an absolute truth suggested itself as
an expedient for escaping from the continuous revaluation
and transvaluation of truths, which forms the history of
human knowledge. The efficacy of the expedient con-
sists essentially in constituting a distinction between

VIII ABSOLUTE TRUTH AND REALITY 207

actual or human, and absolute or ideal truth, and in so
separating them that the latter can be fished up out of
the flux of reality and set up aloft on an immutable
pedestal for the adoration of the faithful. But in this
very separation lurk the dangers which render vain our
idolatry and our sacrifices, and in the end conduct the
whole conception to failure and futility.

For the conception of an absolute truth was not won
without cost. We had to value it above our human
truth, and so to derogate from the latter's authority, and
yet to keep the two related ; and so these sacrifices will
be vain if we fail to show (i) that the conception of
absolute truth solves our original problem and really
guarantees our truths ; and (2) that the new problem it
provokes as to the relation of the actual changing human
truth to its superhuman stable standard is capable of
satisfactory solution.

§ 3. The Futility of Absolute Truth

Now as to ( I ) we soon see reason to doubt whether the
conception of an immutable truth really gives our actual
truths the guarantee we sought. Rather it seems to leave
the problem where we found it. For manifestly we cannot
argue that because absolute truth exists and is immutable,
therefore our truths do not need correction. On the
contrary, we shall have to admit as a general principle
that, just because human, they cannot be absolute. Still
less can we assume that any particular truth that is
recognized at a particular time is absolute and destined to
be permanent. Even though therefore the logician's
heaven were packed tight with a mass of absolute and
eternal verities, rigid and immutable, they could not
miraculously descend to transform our truths and to cure
the impermanence of our conceptions. Neither could the
latter aspire to their superhuman prerogatives. Or even
if they could so descend, we could never discover this, and,
like other deities, they would have lost heaven without
redeeming earth.

2o8 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vm

Absolute truth, therefore, to benefit human truths,
must be conceived as capable of being identified with
them. So long as it is not so conceived, it does nothing
to redeem them from suspicion. And conversely, so long
as human knowledge is not absolute, so long as it cannot
even seriously claim to be so, absolute truth is irrelevant
to human knowledge, and it is gratuitous to assume its
existence.

(2) To save the conception, therefore, we must
examine the relation of human to absolute truth, in
order to see whether they may not be so connected that
some divine virtue from the latter may magically be
instilled into the former. Let us try to conceive, that is,
human truth as a reflexion of absolute, imperfect indeed
but valid, being mysteriously transubstantiated by the
immanence of the absolute and sharing in its substance.

The first point which, on this assumption, must excite
surprise is that the appearance of our truth, in spite of
the sanctification it is said to have undergone, remains
strangely unregenerate. Its salient features are in com-
plete contrast with those of the original it claims to
reproduce. It is fluid, not rigid ; temporal and temporary,
not eternal and everlasting ; arbitrary, not necessary ;
chosen, not inevitable ; born of passion and sprung (like
Aphrodite) from a foaming sea of desires, not ' dis-
passionate ' nor ' purely ' intellectual ; incomplete, not
perfect ; fallible, not inerrant ; absorbed in the attaining of
what is not yet achieved ; purposive and struggling towards
ends, and not basking in their fulfilment. Surely if the
two are really one, and the distortion which dissevers
them lies only in the human eye that sees amiss, our trust
in the competence of our cognitive apparatus will be worse
shaken than before.

And secondly, these features of human truth seem
definitely bound up with the conditions that make it
truth at all. Human truth is discursive, because it cannot
embrace the whole of reality ; it is fallible, because it
never knows the whole, and so may ever need correction
by wider knowledge. It is, in a word, essentially partial.

VIII ABSOLUTE TRUTH AND REALITY 209

Absolute truth, on the other hand, extends to and depends
on a knowledge of the whole. Its absoluteness rests on
its all-embracingness. If there is not completely adequate
knowledge of a completed system of reality there can be
no absolute truth.

But can such knowledge be ascribed to human
minds ? Can we conceive ourselves as contemplating the
whole from the standpoint of the whole? If not, our
truth, y^i-^ because it is partial, and rests on partial data, and
is generated by the partialities of selective attention, and
is directed upon partial ends, which it achieves by playing
off parts of the universe against the others, can never
aspire to the absoluteness which pertains only to the
whole.

Thus the chasm of a difference in kind begins to yawn
between truth human and truth absolute. And this
perhaps we ought to have expected. For did we not
succeed in postulating an absolute truth by exempting it
from all the defects that seemed to mar our truth ? We
have been only too successful ; the separation we enforced
has been too effectual ; absolute truth is safe from con-
tamination, but it can do nothing to redeem our truth :
the two are different in kind, and have no intercourse or
interaction.

Must we not conclude, therefore, that our assumption
of absolute truth is futile and has availed us nothing ?
Even if it existed, it could not help us, because we could
not attain it. Even if we could attain it, we could not
know that we had done so. Even, therefore, if it could
remove doubt, it would not do so to our blinded eyes.

§ 4. The Perniciousness of the Conception of Absolute

Truth

But there is more to be said against the notion of
absolute truth. Its futility, perhaps, will seem no serious
drawback. It does but little harm, and induces at the
worst a loss of time which leisurely philosophy can well
afford to part with. What is that compared with the

210 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vm

delight of rolling in our mouths such dainty words as
' absolute ' and ' truth ' ?

To which it may be replied that those who conceive
philosophy, not as a game for indolent spectators of the
battle of life, but as the culmination of our efforts to grasp
and control the struggle, will not easily condone a futile
waste of time.

But they will condemn the conception of an absolute
truth also on more weighty grounds. They will proceed to
urge against it — (i) that it leads to a shipwreck of the
theory of knowledge ; that (2) it interposes itself between
us and the truth we need ; and (3) by obfuscating the real
nature of the problem, it prevents us from recognizing the
true solution.

(i) The pernicious influence of the notion of absolute
truth on our theory of knowledge will differ according as
the difference between it and human truth is {a) perceived,
or (d) not.

If (a) it is perceived (in the manner shown above), we
shall of course be tempted to suppose that absolute truth
is something grander and more precious than ours. It
will, therefore, cast a slur upon all human knowledge, which
will be despised as a ludicrous and vain attempt to
achieve the impossible, viz. to reflect the absolute. To
the pain and loss of discovering that our ' truths ' are null —
the malady which afflicted us before — there is now added
contempt for the human presumption which tries to inflate
man into a measure of the universe.

The more clear-sighted of absolutists therefore will to
all practical intents be sceptics, and even though they will
contend that it is only for the greater glory of the
Absolute that they have shattered human truth, they will
find it hard, even theoretically, to draw the very fine
line which marks them off from the downright sceptic.
The most eminent of absolutists, Mr. F. H. Bradley, has
signally illustrated this inevitable consequence.^

1 To him may now be added Mr. Joachim, whose ' ideal ' of knowledge breaks
down just in the way anticipated, although this was written before his book
appeared. Cp. Essay vi.

vm ABSOLUTE TRUTH AND REALITY 211

{b) If the difference is not perceived, if by drugs and
prayers the eye of the soul is sufficiently dimmed to take
our truth for absolute, the consequences will be very
nearly as disastrous. It will not indeed be all truth that
will run the risk of rejection, but all new truth. For if a
recognized ' truth ' is regarded as ' absolute,' it is naturally
stereotyped. (l) Alteration will become impossible, the
effort to improve it will be discouraged and will cease ;
in short, the path of progress will be blocked. And even
formally, a theory of knowledge which cannot account for
its growth has no great claim upon our veneration. (2)
The belief that our truth is absolute is pernicious, not
only as checking its development, but also as incapacitating
us from understanding its real nature, and (3) the true
nature of the problem presented by the growth of know-
ledge, and its true solution. For it renders us impatient
of following the real clues to the development of truth,
and so prevents us from perceiving that, properly under-
stood, this affords no ground for the sceptical inferences to
escape from which we vainly appealed to the notion of
absolute truth.

§ 5. The Real Nature of the Growth of Truth

If we adopt the Humanist view that 'truth' is
essentially a valuation, a laudatory label wherewith we
decorate the most useful conceptions which we have
formed up to date in order to control our experience,
there is not the slightest reason why the steady flow
of the stream of * truths ' that pass away should inspire
us with dismay. Every ' truth ' has its day, but what
matters it, if sufficient for the day is the truth thereof?
That a ' truth ' should turn out ' false ' is a calamity
only if we are unable to supplant it by a 'truer.' But
if instead of practising dialectics in the study, we con-
descend to observe the actual growth of knowledge, we
find that we change ' truths ' only for the better. We
are enabled to declare an old ' truth ' ' false ' because we
are able to find a new one which more than fills its

212 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vm

place. We do not discard a valuable and serviceable
conception, until we have something more valuable and
convenient, i.e. truer, to serve us in its stead. Even where
it is necessary to condemn the old truth as ' false ' —
a harsh necessity commonly imposed on us only by the
pertinacity with which unprogressive thinkers cling to
it — its ' falsity ' does not mean revolution so much as
development. The ' false ' is absolute as little as the
' true.* It is commonly a term attached to an earlier
phase of the process which has evolved the ' truth.' Hence
to regard the discarded ex-truth as merely ' error ' is to
fail to do justice to its record, to fail to express the
continuity of the process whereby knowledge grows.

Thus the abstract intellectualist view of truth creates
a dialectical difficulty which does not really exist. Our
* truth ' is not merely being * falsified,' but also being
' verified ' in one and the same process ; it is corrected
only to be improved. So the Humanist can recognize
necessary errors as well as necessary truths, errors, that
is, which are fruitful of the truths which supersede
them.

Herein lies the explanation also of the otherwise
paradoxical fact that those who have most experience of
the fallibility of human truth are least disposed to be
sceptical about it. For being actively engaged in 'making'
or * discovering ' truth, they are too busy with anticipating
achievement to reflect upon the failures that strew the
path of every science. It is not to the invalidation of the
old truths, but to the establishment of the new, that they
are attending. Thus the whole procedure carries with
it a feeling of fulfilment, which is encouraging and not
depressing. They see the new truth continuously growing
out of the old, as a more satisfactory mode of handling
the old problems. The growth of truth cannot therefore
suggest to them a growth of doubt, as it naturally does
to the indolent spectator.

Nor is it really a paradox to maintain that our ' errors '
were ' truths ' in their day. For they were the most
adequate ways we then had of dealing with our ex-

VIII ABSOLUTE TRUTH AND REALITY 213

perience. They were not, therefore, valueless. Nor were
they gratuitous errors. More commonly they were natural,
or even indispensable, stages in the attainment of better
' truths.'

And so the prospect of further improvements in the
formulas whereby we know the world, which will supersede
our present truths, does not appal us. They will be
welcome when and as they come. They will not put
us to intellectual confusion, unless we narrow-mindedly
exclude them : on the contrary they will mean a more
adequate fulfilment of what we now desire.

Viewing truth in this way, we shall regard it neither
disdainfully nor unprogressively. We shall regard no
truth as so rigidly ' absolute ' as to be incapable of
improvement. But we shall not despise it for displaying
so tractable a flexibility. We shall honour it the more
for thus adjusting itself to the demands of life. It will
fulfil its function, even if it perishes in our service, pro-
vided that it has left behind descendants more capable of
carrying on its salutary work,

§ 6. Absolute Truth as an Ideal

Shall we conclude, then, that the conception of an
absolute truth is a mere will-o'-the-wisp?

No ; rightly conceived, it has the value of a valid
ideal for human knowledge. The ideal of a truth wholly
adequate, adequate that is to every human purpose, may
well be called truth absolute. Nor did the absolutist err
in describing its formal character. It would be, as he says,
stable, immutable, and eternal. His fatal mistake is to
conceive it as already actual. For by thus attributing
actual existence to it in a non-human sphere, he spoils it
as an ideal for man ; he dissevers it from the progress of
human knowledge, and disables it as an encouragement
to human effort.

Moreover, so to conceive it is at one blow to reduce
our actual knowledge to superfluity and illusion. If the
truth is already timelessly achieved, what meaning can

214 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vin

our struggles to attain it ultimately claim ? They cannot
make a truth already made, they cannot add to a perfection
already possessed, they cannot enrich a significance already
complete. They must inexorably be condemned as
unmeaning surplusage. Thus the real function of the
ideal has been destroyed by untimely haste to proclaim
its reality.

II. THE CONCEPTION OF ABSOLUTE REALITY

§ 7, It is an integral part of the Humanist theory of
knowledge that the System of Truth and the world of
Reality are constructed by one and the same purposive
manipulation out of the materials provided by crude or
immediate experience, and that consequently the processes
of knowing reality and of establishing truth must not be
separated even in statement. The discussion, therefore,
of the conception of Absolute Reality will naturally run
parallel to that of Absolute Truth ; but as the pragmatic
handling of this theme is still sufficiently novel to be fre-
quently misunderstood, it will be advantageous to reiterate
the general argument in its special application to a distinct
question.

And to begin with, we must consider the characteristics
of R-^ality which our science recognizes and de facto deals
with. Scientific reality, i.e. as it enters into and is treated
in the sciences, normally exhibits the following features,
(i) It is not rigid, but plastic and capable of development ;
(2) it is not absolute nor unconditionally real, but relative
to our experience and dependent on the state of our
knowledge ; (3) our conception of it changes, and so (4)
often reduces to unreality what had long been accepted as
real ; (5) initial reality (like initial truth) is claimed by
everything in experience ; (6) we need therefore a principle
which acts selectively to discriminate between initial reality,
or primary experience, and ' real ' reality which has sur-
vived the fire of criticism and been promoted to superior
rank ; (7) even more markedly than in the case of
truth, the constant substitution of more for less adequate

VIII ABSOLUTE TRUTH AND REALITY 215

conceptions of reality does 7iot engender scepticism. At
every step we are confident that here at last we have
reached the goal ; but even though the next step may show
that we were too sanguine, we are never undeceived and
never doubt our powers to attain reality.

Nevertheless the idea of an Absolute Reality has
cropped up here also as a device for avoiding the restless-
ness of a dynamic reality, and as a short cut to intellectual
repose. Here also it is supposed to support and guarantee,
to round off and confirm, the realities we actually deal
with.

§ 8. TJie Fiitility of Absolute Reality

Here also the notion is delusive. For (i) the Absolute
Reality gives us no aid in dealing with the realities we
actually recognize ; (2) it cannot be related to them ;

(3) it therefore disparages the value of our realities, and

(4) obstructs a more adequate knowledge of reality; (5)
as before, the mistake consists in the attempt to project
into reality a misconceived ideal, with the result that
the ideal loses its value, and the nature of the real is
obscured.

(i) It is an entire mistake to suppose that the general
conviction that there is absolute reality is a reason for
declaring absolute any apparent reality. It is not even a
help in discriminating between conflicting realities which
claim to be truly real. For how are we to decide that
anything in particular is (or is not) as real as it seems ?
The belief in an absolute reality will but justify us in
looking for it ; the risk in identifying it when found
will remain precisely what it was. And will it not always
be presumptuous to assume that we have attained it ?
And if we had assumed it, how could we prove it ? All
the old difficulties which arise from the growth of our
knowledge of reality, from the discarding of old supersti-
tions, from the ' discovery ' of new facts, would beset us
as before. Beyond the satisfaction of believing that
absolute reality existed somewhere in the world, our
practical gain would be nil.

2i6 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vm

(2) It would be very difficult, moreover, to establish
any effective connexion between the absolute reality we
had postulated, and our own. Our reality seems in all
respects to fall short of the ideal of a reality, stable,
immutable, perfect, unconditional, self-sufficing, and
worthy to be dignified with the title of ' absolute.' The
reals we know all seem corruptible and transitory ; they
are incessantly changing ; they are penetrated through
and through with imperfections ; it is their nature to
depend on others and to be as little able to satisfy
them as themselves. To realize our ideal, therefore, they
would have fundamentally to change their nature.

These defects the notion of absolute reality does
nothing to alleviate. It cannot even affect them, for it
can never get into touch with them. Absolute reality
must in self-defence eschew all relation with ours. For
such relation would involve a dependence on the imperfect
which would disturb its own perfection. Relation among
realities implies interaction, and interaction with the un-
stable and changing must import a reflected instability
into the nature of the absolute reality and destroy its
equipoise. The only way therefore for the perfect to
preserve its perfection is to keep aloof: but if it does that,
how, pray, shall it be known by us ?

§ 9. The Perniciousness of the Notion of Absolute Reality

(3) The mere notion, moreover, of an absolute reality
has a disintegrating effect on the realities of human
knowledge. The more glowing the colours, the greater
the enthusiasm, with which absolute reality is depicted,
the more precarious grows the status of human reality. It
sinks into the position of an illusion, adjusted no doubt
to the imperfection of ' finite ' being, but for this very
reason ineradicable and irremediable. For from the
standpoint of absolute reality there is no difficulty to sur-
mount. Sub specie absoluti there is no imperfection at all.
We have no case against absolute reality, because our
woes are illusory. So are we. It need not and cannot

vm ABSOLUTE TRUTH AND REALITY 217

help us, because neither they nor we exist for it. If we
start from the other side, we come upon the same
impasse : if, in defiance of all that is rational, finite beings
nevertheless seem to themselves to exist and to battle
with imperfect realities, this shows that such illusion is not
repugnant to the perfection of absolute reality. But if
such illusion does not impair this perfection now, there is
no reason why it ever should in times to come (if it is not
nonsense to speak of future times in connexion with the
Absolute) : for all the Absolute knows or cares, ' finite '
beings may continue to seem to exist and continue to seem
imperfect to themselves and to each other for evermore.
We have not therefore altered the dimensions or the
urgency of our troubles : we have merely denied the cosmic
significance of human life.

Or, looked at from the standpoint of human reality,
all that the thought of an absolute reality effects is subtly
and ail-pervasively to discredit whatever reality we have
felt it right to recognize. It merely warns us that there
is something more real, but unattainable, beyond.

The conclusion therefore is inevitable, that the notion
of an absolute reality is doubly pernicious : {a) as
reducing our reality to unreality in comparison with a
higher reality, and ib) as making the ideal of reality
seem unattainable. These results follow if the disparity
between absolute reality and reality for us is perceived.

(4) If there is no perception of the difference, if, that
is, the two notions are confused, all sorts of realities will
be taken for absolute merely because they happen to
exist. They will accordingly be regarded with the
respect due to absolute reality, and the disastrous con-
sequence will ensue that it will be impious to experiment
with the purpose of (i) rendering them unreal, (2) im-
proving them, and (3) discovering further realities to
supersede or supplement them.

The effects of this superstition will indeed here be
more deleterious than in the parallel case of * absolute '
truth. For the old ' truths ' which could not be got rid
of because they were taken to be absolute, were, after all.

2i8 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vm

not wholly bad. If they had not been valuable, they
would never have been called truths ; they worked and
served our purposes fairly well, and faute de mieux we
could get on with them. The realities we have to accept,
on the other hand, are often intrinsically abominable and
worthy of destruction, and to perpetuate their reality is
wantonly to inflict unnecessary suffering. The belief,
therefore, that they are ultimate and sanctioned by a fixed
order of things, prevents the attainment of what is good,
as well as preserving what is evil.

To symbolize numerically the extent of this mischief,
we might represent the known and accepted realities as,
say, one million. But these, as we have learnt from past
experience, do not exhaust the possibilities of the uni-
verse. There may (i) exist in addition, say, ten million
other realities which may be ' discovered,' i.e. found to be
' rfeal,' if certain experiments are performed which are,
or will be, in our power. Moreover (2) of the million
known realities one-half, say 500,000, may deserve to be
rendered unreal, and may be removable from the world
they contaminate. (3) There may be as many more
potential realities, unreal at present, but capable of being
brought into existence by our efforts.

Now all these three desirable operations are barred
by the notion that our existing realities are absolute.
The rigidly monistic way of conceiving the universe is
singularly unimaginative and lacking in variety. It cuts
down the possibilities to the actualities of existence. It
shuts us off from infinite possibilities of things beautiful,
good, and true, by the wanton dogmatism of its assump-
tion that the absolute is already real, and that the attempt
to remake it is as vain as it is blasphemous.

Consider, on the other hand, the advantages of dis-
carding this notion. We can then permit ourselves to
recognize that reality is still in the making. Nothing is
absolutely settled. Human operations are real experi-
ments with a reality that really responds, and may
respond differently to different manipulations. Reality
no doubt has its habits, good and bad, useful and

vm ABSOLUTE TRUTH AND REALITY 219

inconvenient (as we have), and is not easily induced to
change them. But at bottom they are habits, and leave
it plastic. Consequently at every point at which we
have alternative ways of manipulating either ourselves or
other reals there exists a choice between two really, and
for ever, divergent universes. Thus our actual experience
contains literally infinite possibilities of alternative uni-
verses, which struggle for existence in the minds of
every agent who is capable, in however limited a degree,
of choosing between alternatives.^ Every impulse we
repress or yield to, every act we do or leave undone,
every inquiry we pursue or neglect, realizes a new uni-
verse which was not real, and need never have become so.
Thus it is our duty and our privilege to co-operate in the
shaping of the world ; among infinite possibilities to
select and realize the best. That is not much perhaps,
though it is as much as God could do in the intellectual-
istic scheme of Leibniz ; but it is enough to encourage
us and to confirm our faith. For herein surely lies the
most bracing of responsibilities, the chief attraction of
pluralism, and the most grievous wrong which monism
has inflicted upon our aspirations and our self-respect.

§10. How Reality really grows

(5) After proving that the assumption of absolute
realities is futile, i.e. unnecessary and self-defeating, and
pernicious, it might seem superfluous to show that they
are also ' untrue,' i.e. that they caricature the development
of reality as it actually takes place in our knowledge.

But it is so difficult to get even ' philosophically-
trained ' minds to look at the simple facts of actual
knowing that no means of illumination should be
neglected.

It is a simple fact that the conception of absolute
reality does not enter into our actual knowing of reality.
The conceptions of ' primary,' ' ulterior ' and ultimate,
of ' lower ' and ' higher ' realities do. Yet our epistemo-

^ Cp. Essay xviii. §§ 9-12.

220 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vm

logy has hitherto allowed itself to be so dazzled by the
supernatural effulgence of the former as to blind itself to
the really important function of the latter. And so the
attainment of epistemological knowledge has been sacri-
ficed to the pursuit of metaphysical will-o'-the-wisps.

§ 1 1. The Conception of Primary Reality

We start uncritically with the acceptance of whatever
seems to be. ' Whatever is, is real,' is what we begin with.
If we were purely cognitive beings, we should also stop
with this. For it is utterly false to imagine purely intel-
lectual ' contradictions of appearance ' as initiating the
process of real knowing, and the dialectical diversions of
the young men of Athens some 2000 years ago have been
treated far too seriously by staid philosophers who did not
appreciate Platonic humour. The problem as to how
Socrates, being greater than a flea and less than a whale,
can be both greater and less, has very little to do with
the difficulties of real knowing. But there are no con-
tradictions in appearance so long as we are merely
contemplating it : so long as we do not care what
appears, no course of events can be any more * contra-
dictory' than the shifting scenes of a kaleidoscope.
Whatever appears ' is,* even though it lasts only for a
second.^ Its reality, such as it is, is not impaired by its
impermanence, nor by the fact that something else comes
up and takes its place in the twinkling of an eye.

There is no contradiction in change — until we have
ourselves imported it by developing a desire to control
the changes by means of identities we trace in them.
For until then we do not seek for identities in the
changeful ; change, taken merely as such, is merely what
Kant called 'alternation.' As it presents nothing
' identical ' either in the object or in the subject, the

^ Mr. Bradley here bears us out by saying [Appeara?ice and Reality, p. 132)
" what appears, for that sole reason, indubitably is; and there is no possibility
of conjuring its being away from it." Capt. H. V. Knox has, however, shown
that the coherence of this doctrine with the rest of Mr. Bradley's metaphysic is
very dubious (Mind, xiv. 217).

VIII ABSOLUTE TRUTH AND REALITY 221

problem as to how anything can ' change,' and yet remain
* the same,' does not arise. Events flit across the stage
of Reality in the theatre of Being, to adapt Hume's
famous simile ; but a merely intellectual spectator would
see no reason for rejecting anything, for selecting some
things as more real and important than others, no
occasion to criticize and to wonder how things got there.
Even though he were privileged to become a ' spectator
of all time and all existence,' he would not be able to
' spectate ' to any purpose, nor be really an intelligent
spectator. Having no interest to guide his contempla-
tions he would not analyse the flow of events, because
he would not attend to anything in particular. He
would not even be interested to distinguish ' subject ' from
' object.' This distinction too is teleological, and rooted
in feeling.

In short, at the level of primary reality, conceived as
' purely ' cognitive, everything would be, and remain, in
an unmeaning, undiscriminated flow.

§ 1 2. ''Rear Reality versus Appearance

But the mind is not of such a nature as to put up
with this imaginary situation. It is interested, and pur-
posive, and desirous of operating on, and controlling,
its primary reality. So it proceeds to discriminate, to
distinguish between ' appearance ' and ' reality,' between
' primary ' and * real ' reality, to accept what appears with
mental reservations and provisionally, to operate upon it,
and to alter it. As interests grow various and purposes
are differentiated, ' real reality ' grows more complex. It
is differentiated into a series of realities which are referred
to a series of systems co-ordinated and subordinated to
each other. But as yet only imperfectly. The ultimate
reality which we envisage as the goal of our interpreta-
tions of primary reality, recedes into a more and more
distant ideal. It forms the further pole of our cog-
nitive attitude towards the primary reality, the control
of which is the motive for the whole procedure, and ever

222 STUDIES IN HUMANISM vm

forms our final criterion. For it is upon this touchstone
of direct experience that we test the value of the assumed
realities which claim authority to interpret it.

Thus by a painful and laborious process we supple-
ment the inadequacies of our actual experience by
assumed realities whose reality is assured to us by their
value, by the salutary transformations which they help us
to effect in our life. The process is as unending as the
pursuit of happiness. We are never wholly satisfied ; we
are never therefore wholly willing to accept reality as it
appears. So we conjure into existence the worlds of the
' higher ' realities, from mathematics to metaphysics, from
the idealized abstractions of the humblest science to the
heaven of the loftiest religion. Their function, one and all,
is to control and to transform the reality we have. But
to do this they have to remain related to it, to sympathize
with its career, to share in its vicissitudes. So long
as they succeed in this, they have their reward : they
are not called in doubt, however much, and however
often, they are required to transform themselves. For at
every transformation we can feel ourselves to be advancing
from a less to a more adequate plane of operations, and
can say, ' This then, which we mistook until now, was real
all along,'

So soon, however, as this dependence on and inter-
action with immediate experience is renounced, i.e. so
soon as the higher reality is taken to be something apart
and absolute, its whole function is destroyed. It can no
longer serve even as an ideal ; for an ideal can only be
functional if it is conceived as attainable, though not
attained.^ If therefore absolute reality is either unattain-
able, or already attained, or, worst of all, both {i.e.
attained, but unattainable by us), it ceases to be a valid
ideal.

Yet it was a beautiful ideal until it was miscon-
ceived. It could inspire our efforts to reach a perfect
harmony, and justify our aspirations. For the humanist
also may cherish an ideal of absolute Reality. Nay,

1 Cp. Essay vi. § i.

VIII ABSOLUTE TRUTH AND REALITY 223

he can even determine its formal character. Nothing
is easier. That reality (and that alone) will be prag-
matically absolute, which every one will accept as real
and no one will seek to alter. For a universe completely
satisfied would not seek to change itself, and indeed
could not so much as entertain the thought of change.

The real difficulty lies not in framing ideals, but in
achieving them, and this is a difficulty, not of philosophy,
but of life. And the noblest service philosophy can
render us is to pass a self-denying ordinance, and to draw
our attention away from idle and inactive speculation
about reality in the abstract, to the real ways in which
ideals are realized and the world of reality is rendered fit
to live in.

IX
EMPIRICISM AND THE ABSOLUTE^

ARGUMENT

§ I. The conflict between Evolutionism and a static metaphysic. The back-
sliding of Spencer. § 2. The protest of Humanism. Its acceptance of
common-sense, and criticism of metaphysical, assumptions. The new
issues. Prof. Taylor's attempts at compromise. § 3. Can purpose be
ascribed to the Absolute ? The external contemplation of purpose false.
Hume's trick. § 4. Prof. Taylor on selective attention and Berkeley's
passivism. § 5. His own Berkeleian basis. The impossibility of
selection in the Absolute, which cannot be teleological. § 6. Other
mitigations of intellectualism. § 7. Impossibility of combining Absolut-
ism and Humanism, exemplified (a) in the doctrine of appearance and
reality ; § 8 (<^) of the dual criteria of reality ; § 9 (<^) the relations of
axioms and postulates ; § 10 ((/) intellectualism ; and § 11 the Absolute.
Its derivation, which, § 12, depends wholly on the validity of the
• ontological ' argument. § 13. The Absolute is really a postulate,
§ 1 4, intended to satisfy the craving for unity, and to yield an a priori
guarantee for the future. The fear of the future as the root of
rationalism. §15. The inadequacy of the postulated Absolute.

§ I. Philosophy just now is in a very interesting
condition. For Evolutionism, the great scientific move-
ment of the nineteenth century, is at length investing the

^ This discussion of Prof. A. E. Taylor's Elements of Metaphysics appeared
in Mind for July 1905 (N.S. 55), and in its original form treated his views
as possibly intended to be crypto-pragmatic. His reply, however, in N.S.
57, exonerated him from the charge of talking Pragmatism (except in the
way in which M. Jourdain talked prose) ; his doctrines can now only be treated
as 'pseudo-pragmatic,' and as in some respects seriously inconsistent. My
reasons for this estimate were set out in full in N.S. 59, pp. 375-390 ; but the
discussion, though instructive also for its bearing on the question of 'useless
knowledge,' of which Prof. Taylor attempted to produce some examples (cp.
pp. 384-8), grew too minutely controversial to be included here. I have, how-
ever, profited by it to make some modifications, additions, and omissions, and
have tried to note the gist of Prof. Taylor's replies in footnotes. That Prof.
Taylor has since abandoned Absolutism and reti-u-ned to Theism appears from
his contribution to a symposium on Pluralism in the Aristotelian Society's Pro-
ceedings (1909). Hence my criticisms no longer apply to him personally, but
only to the views of which he has been an unusually lucid expounder.

224

IX EMPIRICISM AND THE ABSOLUTE 225

last well-nigh inaccessible stronghold of 'pure' meta-
physics,^ and systematically grappling with the ultimate
abstractions which human thought has recognized and
respected for ages, but has never succeeded in rendering
really useful and intelligible. In saying this I am of
course well aware that the application of Evolutionism to
metaphysics is supposed to have been accomplished by
the Synthetic Philosophy of Herbert Spencer. This
popular belief, however, is easily shown to be a mis-
apprehension. If we take as the essence of Evolutionism
the doctrine that the world is in process, and as its chief
corollaries its vindication of the reality of change and of
the belief that real (and not merely apparent) novelties
occur, it is easily seen (i) that the old metaphysic must
ultimately reject these doctrines, and (2) that Spencer's
final surrender to its prejudices involves a failure to work
out a truly evolutionist philosophy.

As to the first point, it has always been assumed
that ultimately Reality must be a closed system, a fixed
quantity, immutable substance, or absolute whole. What
has not always been perceived to be an inevitable con-
sequence is that Reality must, in the last resort, be
stationary, that if so, there can be neither increase nor
decrease in Being, and that the changes, processes, and
novelties we suppose ourselves to experience and observe
do not really mean alterations in the substance of the
All. They must, in other words, be human illusions (or,
more politely, " appearances "), which do not penetrate to,
or affect, the eternally complete and immutable Reality.
If, resenting this paradox of metaphysics, we plead that
these " appearances " are inextricably intertwined with the
whole reality of human life, we are baffled by the retort
that this only shows that we too are ' appearance.'

Such metaphysic plainly is not to be silenced by mere
common-sense : it must be fought with its own weapons.
And so it is probably more profitable to point out that in
strict consistency these metaphysicians should demand,
not merely that change, etc., should be illusions, but also

1 Felicitously entitled ' Jericho ' by Mr. Bradley {Mind, xiii. p. 330).

226 STUDIES IN HUMANISM ix

that such illusions should be impossible. As Prof. Stout
has pointed out, you can call all ' reality ' illusion, but in
so doing you imply the reality of the illusion. If then
change is truly irrational and unthinkable, it should not
be able to maintain even an illusory existence in a
rational universe ; and the very existence of such an
illusion is itself as irrational and unthinkable as the reality
which was condemned as illusory. Abstract metaphysic,
therefore, is unable to explain, and unwilling to accept,
phenomenal change, process, and novelty : if it desires to
be consistent, it must simply deny them, and revert as
nearly as possible to its earliest form, viz. Eleaticism. To
evoke a philosophic meaning from the everyday facts of
change and novelty and from the scientific testimonies to
vast cosmic processes, we need a different method, which
will deign to consider whether we should not do as well,
or better, by frankly accepting the apparent facts of
ordinary life and science, and regarding rather our prefer-
ence for the constant and immutable as an artificial
device which is susceptible of derivation and limited in
application. In other words, we need Humanism.

(2) Now Spencer, in his attempt at an evaluation of
the idea of Evolution, unfortunately committed himself to
a use of physical principles which belong inalienably to
the static series of conceptions, and are designed to satisfy
our craving for constancy. The indestructibility of matter
and the conservation of energy (' persistence of force ')
are constitutionally incapable of yielding a justification
for the belief in a real process, a real progress, and a real
alteration in the meaning of the world. In consequence,
the phenomena of life and consciousness, in which the
reality of such evolution is most manifest (for psychically
every experience is more or less ' new '), have to be reduced
by Spencer to physical terms. And thus the whole
evolutionary process becomes nugatory in the end.
Spencer has to admit that the differentiation -process
which forms the cosmic diastole has for its counterpart a
systole which restores all things to homogeneity, and that
throughout both processes the axiom of the Persistence of

IX EMPIRICISM AND THE ABSOLUTE 227

Force remains uninfringed. In terms of ultimate reality,
therefore, both processes mean tJie same, and at the end
of the infinite toil and struggle of the cosmic agony, the
universe is where it was, neither richer nor poorer, neither
better nor worse. Evolution therefore has turned out a
merely subjective illusion, engendered by our incapacity
to follow the giant swing of the cosmic pendulum.

§ 2. But can we hesitate to declare this result to be,
humanly speaking, most unsatisfactory, and indeed pro-
foundly irrational ? And is it not worth while at least
to entertain proposals for the radical revision of the meta-
physical prepossessions that have brought us to such a
pass ? Why, after all, should we insist on starting from
the conception of an absolute Whole presumed to be
unalterable ? Why should we not set out rather from
the facts of our ' finite ' struggling life, and pluck up
courage to scrutinize the construction of the scientific, or
rather metaphysical, bogies that stand in the way of a
thorough-going Evolutionism? So at least the Humanist
must argue. He takes for granted all those features of
our experience which are undeniable on the common-
sense level of life. He takes as the sole essential problem
of philosophy the harmonizing of a life, which is as yet
inharmonious, but which he is willing to believe may be
transmuted into harmony. And instead of contenting
himself with a verbal 'proof that all evil is 'appearance'
which is ' transcended ' sub specie aeternitatis, and then
submitting tamely to the cosmic nightmare in saecula
saeculorum, he accepts all the apparent features of life, its
transitoriness, cruelty, ignorance, uncertainty, struggle ;
the reality of its chances and changes, of its gains and
losses, of its pains and pleasures, of its values, ethical,
logical, and aesthetical, of its goods and evils, truths and
errors, as alike data for thought to grapple with and to
transform, and holds that only by achieving this does our
thought vindicate its use, and our truth become truly
true. Not that the Humanist imagines that all these
features will in the end turn out to be equally significant ;
he contends only that they cannot be proved delusions

228 STUDIES IN HUMANISM ix

a priori^ that the sole way of proving them unreal is by
abolishing them, and that until they have been so
abolished they must be reckoned with as facts.

In the rationalistic intellectualism,^ on the other hand,
in which the method of abstract metaphysics culminates,
all these initial facts of common life are contemptuously
ignored. Nothing less than the absolute totality of
existence is worthy of its notice or worth assuming. This
totality it supposes itself to demonstrate by some version
of the ontological proof, and aims at developing, by
a priori reasoning, into a coherent and consistent, self-
determined and unalterable system.

To the Humanist, on the other hand, this whole pro-
cedure seems a tissue of fallacious and futile assumptions.
Why should he assume that experience necessarily forms
a whole before he has got it all together? that it forms a
system before he has traced it out ? that the system is one,
before he has found that his actual world can intelligibly
be treated as such ? that the system is perfect (in any but
a verbal, intellectualist sense) before he has tried it ? And
if he assumes these things because he would like them to
be true, what does he make the totality of Reality but a
conceptual postulate, perhaps of rationality, perhaps of a
subtler irrationality, which can be tested only by its work-
ing, and can in no case be argued from a priori! What
in general are the a priori truths but claims, what are
axioms but postulates ? As for the complete determina-
tion of the universe, is not both the fact and its value
open to doubt ? As for its unity, is not its value emotional
and illusory rather than scientific, so long as we can neither
avoid assuming a plurality of factors in all scientific
calculation, nor identify our actual world with the one
immutable universe, so long as it seems to us subject to

^ It is better to avoid the term ' idealism,' as being too equivocal to be useful.
There are too many ' idealisms ' in the market, many of them more essentially
opposed to each other than to views classified as 'realism.' Plato, e.g., has
an indefeasible claim to the title of 'idealist,' but Mr. G. E. Moore, in reviving
the Platonic hypostasization of abstract qualities in an e.xtreme form, prefers
to call himself a ' realist. ' Berkeley again is firmly established in the histories
of philosophy as the typical idealist, but his sensationalism constitutes a most
irritating challenge to the rationalists' claim to monopolize the name. In
addition, there are 'subjective' and 'personal' and 'empirical' 'idealists' galore.

IX EMPIRICISM AND THE ABSOLUTE 229

irruptions from without its known limits and to the erup-
tion of novelties within them ? -^ As for its immutability,
is it not a direct defiance of our primary experience and
a wanton stultification of the evolutionist method ? And
finally, is not the fundamental intellectualism of the old
metaphysic a gross parody of our actual thought, which
proceeds from a purposive intelligent activity, and was
not, and is not, and never can be, separated from the
practical needs of life ?

Humanism therefore challenges all the assumptions on
which rationalistic intellectualism has reposed ever since
the days of Plato. Against such a challenge the old
catchwords of its warfare with the sensationalistic intel-
lectualism of the British empiricists are no longer adequate.
They are as plainly outranged by the novelty as its pre-
judices are outraged by the audacity of the voluntarist
attack. A complete change of front, and a thorough re-
arrangement of its forces, have become imperative. And
by the younger men among its exponents this is begin-
ning to be perceived. Prof. A. E. Taylor has not yet
perhaps fully realized the magnitude and difficulty of the
readjustment which is needed in his camp, and he has
certainly not succeeded in repelling the attack ; but he has
perceived that the creed of the ' Anglo-Hegelian ' ^ Intel-
lectualism rests on a dangerously narrow basis. The lucid
and agreeable form of his Elements of Metaphysics^ his
manifest anxiety to assimilate at least as much of the new
material as may be needed to leave the old positions
tenable, and the importance of making clear just where
the difficulties of mediating between Absolutism and
Humanism lie, amply warrant a detailed examination of
this side of his work.

As the result of such examination, it will be found that
though Prof. Taylor has not been able to bridge the gulf
between the old philosophy and the new — indeed, he has
hardly been invested with full authority by his party — he
has effected some instructive modifications, and discovered
some interesting jumping-off places.

1 Cp. Essay xii. § 9. ^ As he calls it {Mind, xv. p. 90).

230 STUDIES IN HUMANISM ix

§ 3. (i) Perhaps the most striking of Prof. Taylor's
innovations is his constant use of the language of purpose
and teleology.^ For, in words at least, this seems to
concede the main principle for which Humanism has
contended, viz. the purposiveness of human thought and
experience.

Unfortunately, however, for the fruitful application of
this principle. Prof. Taylor hardly seems to conceive pur-
pose in the natural way. He habitually regards it rather
from the external standpoint of the contemplative spectator
than from that of the purposing agent, and it will always
be found that a philosophy which refuses to enter into
the feelings of the agent must in the end pronounce
the whole conception of agency an unmeaning mystery.
Now this ab extra way of conceiving agency from the
standpoint of a bystander was Hume's fundamental trick,
the root of all his naturalism, and the basis of his success
as a critic of causation. It seems curious, therefore, that
rationalists should never try to emancipate themselves
from it, but should accept it meekly and without question,
the more so as their ' answers to Hume ' are always upset
by it. For it would be possible to show that once this
assumption is made, there is (i) no real answer to Hume,
(2) no escape from naturalism, and (3) no room left for
the conception of agency ; and it may be suggested that
the radical unsoundness of the transcendentalists' position
at this point is the real reason for the obscurity and
unsatisfactoriness of their own treatment of causation ever
since the days of Kant. So long as Hume's specious
arguments against our immediate experience of agency
are accepted, agents and activities cannot be recognized
anywhere in the universe, and we are driven to the desperate
contradiction of ascribing an ' activity ' to the whole which
is denied to all its parts and ought not to exist, even as a
word ; it is ^ fortiori imipossible, therefore, to see how we

^ Cp. especially pp. 55, 58, 66, 106, 162, 204. Prof. Taylor retorted that
his debt was to Professors Ward and Royce [Mind, N.S. xv. 88). I replied (i)
that neither of these fitted into a Bradleian metaphysic ; (2) that it was necessary
to have an e.xplanation with Humanist teleology ; and (3) that he had been
challenged to explain how an Absolute could have a purpose [Mind, xv. p. 377).

IX EMPIRICISM AND THE ABSOLUTE 231

could be active enough to lay down ' rules ' for the appre-
hending of events.^

Prof. Taylor, therefore, seems to fall into an insidious
but far-reaching error when he says (p. 55) "all that I
mean is that the processes of conscious life are as a matter
of fact only mtelligible with reference to the results in
which they culminate ... or again that they all involve
the kind of continuity of interest which belong {sic) to
attention." ^ Similarly in defining spirit (p. 99), " where
you have a connected system of factors which can only
be understood " (why not understand themselves ?) " by
reference to an explicit or implicit end which constitutes
their unity, you have spirit." ^ On this it seems obvious
to remark that unless ' you ' were an actively purposing
spirit, you could never regard any connexion of things as
teleological. And the human spirit is, of course, teleo-
logical, because it attends and operates selectively. But
these very facts suggest the deepest doubt as to the
transfer of these features to the Whole. Can an Absolute
attend or act selectively, can it be ' teleological ' or
' spiritual ' in any humanly intelligible sense ?

§ 4. To answer this question, let us examine Prof.
Taylor's treatment of selective attention. It is most
instructive. The conception does not occur in his master,
Mr. F. H. Bradley, who is too much under the spell of
Hume to admit the notion of activity. He has taken it
from Prof. Stout, and is eager to use it as a good stick
for beating the elder (and saner) brother, whom ' absolute '
idealists are always so anxious to disparage and so unable
to dispense with, viz. Berkeleian idealism. Accordingly
he points out (p. 66) — what is true of intellectualism as
such, but less patently applicable to Berkeleianism than
to most rationalistic forms of intellectualism — viz. that
Berkeley conceived the mind as passive, and did not allow
for its interests and purposes. " Berkeley," he says,
"omits selective attention from his psychological estimate
of the contents of the human mind. He forgets that it

^ Cp. James in The Pluralistic Universe, p. 370-94.
■^ Italics mine. ^ P. 3 ; cp. also pp. 5 and 44. Italics mine.

232 STUDIES IN HUMANISM ix

is the interests for which I take note of facts that in the
main determine which facts I shall take note of, an over-
sight which is the more remarkable, since he expressly
lays stress on ' activity ' as the distinguishing property of
' spirits.' When we make good the omission by empha-
sizing the teleological aspects of experience, we see at
once that the radical disparity between the relation of the
supreme and the subordinate mind to the world of facts
disappears. I do not receive my presented facts passively
in an order determined for me from without by the
supreme mind ; in virtue of my power of selective atten-
tion, on a limited scale, and very imperfectly, I recreate
the order of their succession for myself. . . .

The very expression ' selective attention ' itself carries
with it a reminder that the facts which respond to my
interests are but a selection out of a larger whole. And
my practical experience of the way in which my own
most clearly defined and conscious purposes depend for
their fulfilment upon connexion with the interests and
purposes of a wider social whole possessed of an organic
unity, should help me to understand how the totality of
interests and purposes determining the selective attention
of different percipients can form, as we have held that it
must, the harmonious and systematic unity of the absolute
experience. ... It is hardly too much to say that the
teleological character which experience possesses in virtue
of its unity with feeling is the key to the idealistic inter-
pretation of the universe."

§ 5. Philosophy would become delightfully easy if the
fundamental deficiencies of intellectualism could be cured
in the facile fashion of this passage ; but Prof. Taylor's
whole procedure is, alas, illusory. It should be observed,
in the first place, that in spite of his continual protests
against Berkeley, he himself has to proceed from a subjec-
tive basis. He has to argue, that is, from the behaviour
of his mind to that of the Absolute. His mind attends
selectively, he finds, and thereby constitutes reality ; ergo
the Absolute is conceived to act similarly.

It must be conjectured that when Prof. Taylor argued

IX EMPIRICISM AND THE ABSOLUTE 233

thus, he had lapsed into happy oblivion of the nature of
the absolute mind and the meaning of which it is the
expression. Otherwise he could not but have been im-
pressed by the difference between its functioning and that
of a human mind.

A human mind initially commences its career in a
jumble resembling a chaotic rag-bag. It finds itself con-
taining things valuable, worthless, and pernicious, dreams,
illusions, fancies, delusions, incongruities, inconsistencies,
etc., all jostling the materials for what are subsequently
construed as realities. If, therefore, any approach to a
harmonious life is to be constructed out of such stuff,
a large amount of selection is necessary. The pernicious
contents must be kept under and as far as possible elimin-
ated ; the worthless and useless must be neglected ; and
so chaos must be turned into something like a cosmos.
This we do by selectively attending to what turns out to
be valuable, and by ignoring those elements in our experi-
ence which we cannot use.

Similarly in our actions we never operate with or
upon the universe as a whole. We choose our ends and
select our means ; we dissect our ' effects ' and ' causes '
from the unaccentuated flow of events ; it is essential to
our science to select limited and partial subjects of inquiry.
In short, ' action ' seems to connote selection, and selec-
tion must seem arbitrary and indefensible if human pur-
poses have been abstracted from.

Now compare the ' absolute mind ' of philosophic
theory. It was conceived as all-inclusive ; its business
and function is to contain everything. It must therefore
ex officio and ex vi terviini include all the rubbish every
human mind is encumbered with and has such trouble to
get rid of For though we can condemn it as ' appear-
ance,' the Absolute cannot. For ultimately even ' appear-
ance ' is a sort of ' reality,' and must be included in its
proper place. And this place is the Absolute, which has
room for all things, for which all things are valuable, nay
essential, seeing that if they were not, they would not
exist ! Or if it be maintained that the Absolute can

234 STUDIES IN HUMANISM ix

purify itself by recognizing nothing but ' reality ' in the
fullest sense, will it not inevitably follow that the human
mind and all its belongings are cast out upon the rubbish-
heap of appearances which are unworthy of the Absolute's
notice ? And in that case of what value is the Absolute
as a conception to explain our experience ?

If, then, the Absolute has to include everything to
fulfil its function, if it exists for us in order to include
what we reject, how can it selectively attend to paj't of its
contents ? Must not all that is be valuable to All-that-
is ? What private, limited, and partial interests can it
have to compel it to ' select ' facts out of a larger whole ?
It is itself the ' larger whole,' and its sole interest must be
to represent tJiat. It cannot abnegate this function, and
' select ' like * finite ' man, without becoming partial and
ceasing to be itself.

Manifestly, therefore, no argument holds from selective
attention in us to selective attention in the Absolute.
For one can hardly press Prof. Taylor's language as
seriously advocating a naive fallacy of composition to the
effect that because all (distributively) are interested in
some things, therefore all (collectively) are interested in a
totality in which all special emphasis has disappeared.

And his further procedure in arguing from selective
attention in the individual to the recognition of a social,
and ultimately of an absolute, environment is equally
fallacious. He has failed to observe that the mere prac-
tice of selective attention does not carry him off the
subjective ground he started on. We have seen that a
selective ordering of experiences is a vital necessity. It
would be so equally to a solipsist who had refrained from
postulating an ' external world ' populated by ' other '
minds. He too would have to order his experiences
and to discriminate their values. Only he would reach
analogous results by different methods. It is only when
our various postulates have been made and found to work,
that our experience can be systematized in ways which
recognize them by name, and that so we speak of our
' social ' environment.

IX EMPIRICISM AND THE ABSOLUTE 235

And even then the taking account of wider environ-
ments must, it would seem, stop short of the whole. The
Absolute, strictly and properly conceived, can never be
the explanation of anything in particular. It can there-
fore enter any valid purpose as little as it can itself have
a purpose, or aim at completing what is already the whole.
Neither, therefore, has it teleological value itself, nor is its
own nature teleological. What warrant, then, has any
absolutist philosophy to treat human purposiveness as
more significant than anything else included in the whole,
or to attribute cosmic value to human teleology ?

We must conclude, therefore, that Prof. Taylor's recog-
nition of the purposiveness of human thought and action
is either illusory or so inconsistent with his fundamental
views that it could not but lead him away from the
absolutism he professes, if he would work it out. And
the objections to this particular eclecticism have turned
out to be sufficiently general to render it one of the most
urgent desiderata of absolutist metaphysics to show how
the typically human conception of purpose can be attri-
buted to the Absolute and conceived as a specific function
of the Absolute. But the omens augur ill for such an
undertaking.

§ 6. (2) His psychological studies seem to have some-
what emancipated Prof Taylor from the fatal fiction of a
disinterested intellect. He even dares to represent meta-
physics as the product of an " instinctive demand of our
intellect for coherency and consistency of thought." ^ In
science this interest is definitely practical, and its original
object " is practical success in interference with the course
of events " (p. 226). Historically, therefore, science is an
offshoot of the arts (p. 385), and to this day "the ultimate
object of all physical science is the successful formulation
of such practical rules for action" (p. 284).^

Hence (3) Science, Prof. Taylor agrees, makes use of

^ p. 3 ; cp. also pp. 5 and 44. Italics mine.

'^ Cp. , however, pp. 121-2, where to aim at "practical success in action
rather than at logical consistency in thinking" is called a /r^-JC?V«^?/fc attitude,
and the aim of Science is reduced to that of 'metaphysics,' viz. consistent
systematization.

236 STUDIES IN HUMANISM ix

Postulates, which serve its practical purposes without
being ultimately true. Thus the principle of causality
" must be pronounced to be neither an axiom nor an
empirical truth, but a postulate, in the strict sense of the
word, i.e. an assumption which cannot be logically justi-
fied, but is made because of its practical value, and depends
for confirmation on the success with which it can be
applied. In the sense that it is a postulate which experi-
ence may confirm but cannot prove, it may properly be
said to be a priori, but it is manifestly not a priori in the
more familiar Kantian sense of the word" (p. 167).^

Similarly (pp. 175-6) the analysis of events into in-
dependent series, and their mathematical calculability,
are postulates. It is too " a practical methodological
postulate that the reign of law in physical nature is
absolute" (p. 223), and a possible failure of experience
to confirm it is disregarded because of our interest to
discover such uniformities. " We treat all sequences as
capable, by proper methods, of reduction to uniformity,
for the same reason that we treat all offenders as possibly
reclaimable. We desire that they should be so, and we
therefore behave as if we knew that they were so " (p.
200). " Space and Time are phenomenal, the result of
a process of construction forced on us by our practical
needs" (p. 230).-

^ Cp. also pp. 227-9. I' 's difficult to estimate how far this doctrine is
modified in Prof. Taylor's interesting "Side Lights on Pragmatism" (in the
M'Gill University Magazine, iii. 2). For though Prof. Taylor again instances
(p. 61) among the " beliefs which are useful but cannot be proved independently
to be true," "our scientific beliefs in causation or in the existence of laws of
nature," and tells us that " for the purpose of formulating practical rules for the
manipulation of bodies it is advantageous to be assured that . . . whatever
happens . . . will happen again without variation," he is by no means clear
about the logical position of this postulate. Immediately after he goes on to say
that because such assumptions are merely considered true because they are con-
venient, "we have no right to say that they are true exxept within the limits in
which they have been verified by actual experience." This would again invalidate
them as methods oi prediction, and exactly parallels Mill's famous stultification
of the causal principle when he admitted that it might not hold in distant parts
of the stellar regions. Prof. Taylor exhibits this contradiction in a more compact
form, but with as profound an unconsciousness of its logical import.

^ I cannot see why after this Prof. Taylor should insist on treating the Con-
servation of Mass and of Energy as only empirical generalizations (p. 177). In
his reply he treats the recognition of postulates as something which might have
occurred to any one, but denies that they are found in arithmetic {Mind, xv.
p. 89). I commented on the awkwardness of the anomaly, etc. {I.e. p. 378).

IX EMPIRICISM AND THE ABSOLUTE 237

It will be clear from the above that Prof. Taylor has
no mean grasp of the epistemological convenience of pos-
tulates, and though their relations to the axioms are far
from clear, and he does not apparently perceive their
importance as an epistemological clue, it seems indisput-
able that he has surrendered some of the most characteristic
features of the Kantian and post-Kantian apriorism.^

(4) Occasionally Prof. Taylor catches still deeper
glimpses of the function of thought in the service of
humanity. Rightly denying the possibility of an a priori
theory of knowledge, he remarks (p. 17) that " the instru-
ment can only be studied in its work, and we have to
judge of its possibilities by the nature of its products." ^

After two such apergus a relapse into intellectualism
would hardly seem logically possible, the more so as
Prof. Taylor also recognizes the teleological character of
the construction of identity, and regards it as a methodo-
logical assumption that " there are situations in the
physical order which may be treated, with sufficient
accuracy for our practical purposes, as recurring iden-
tically "^ (p. 284). It is difficult not to take this as subor-
dinating the conception of 'identity' to practical purposes.
In the physical order, at all events, * identity' would seem
to be not * found ' but ' made ' or * taken ' with a purpose
which conditions its existence, and when we remember the
terrible embarrassments in which the fact of this ' arbitrary
making ' of identities involves intellectualistic logic,* it will
seem strange that after departing so far from the spirit of
Mr. Bradley's scepticism, he should have stopped short of
recognizing all logical identifying to be a pragmatically
justified experiment.^

^ Kant personally he is only too eager to throw overboard, accusing his
epistemological position of confusion (pp. 40, 134, 242).

2 Cp. p. 32 ; italics mine. Prof. Taylor denies that this was intended to bear
a pragmatic meaning, but proceeds to explain what he meant in a way which
seems to me to bring out still more clearly the pragmatism logically implicit in
his dictum.

^ Cp. also pp. 335 and 98.

■* Cp. Essays, iii. § 8, iv. § 4.

'In spite of saying that " all identity appears in the end to be teleological "
{Elem. of Met. p. 335), he denies, however, that he meant to conceive logical
identity as a postulate. Cp. Pers. Ideal, pp. 94-104 ; and Mind, xv. p. 380.

238 STUDIES IN HUMANISM ix

And so finally (5) Prof. Taylor is sometimes beguiled
into what looks suspiciously like the most radical empiri-
cism. He says (p. 23) that "the real is experience, and
nothing but experience, and experience consists of
psychical matter-of-fact. Proof of this proposition can
only ^ be given in the same way as of any other ^ ultimate
truth., by making trial of it." Again (p. 38) "the true
character of any scientific method can of course only ^ be
discovered by the actual use of it." ^

Prof. Taylor hereupon explains {Mind, xv. 91) that the
remark only means that " you cannot analyse the methods
of a science properly until you have them embodied before
you in examples," and has no bearing on the issue between
rationalists and empiricists. After this one is more at a
loss than ever to understand how the definition of truth
can be laid down a priori and the nature of logic be
determined without reference to their actual functioning
when applied to experience. Are we to suppose that a
methodological rule which applies to, all the sciences is not
to be applied to knowledge in general ?

§ 7. It should be sufficiently apparent from the above
samples that Prof. Taylor's book exhibits an interesting
development of Absolutism, which, until he disclaimed
the intention, and protested his innocence, might well be
conceived as an attempt to transfer to it some of the
most distinctive features of Humanism, in order to enrich
the barren doctrine that the Absolute is absolute. In
view of his disclaimer, however, it must be assumed
that the approximations are more apparent than real,
and that his ' pragmaticoid ' utterances are in reality
pseudo-pragmatic, even where they seem incompatible
with his system, and where pragmatism would seem to be
their logical implication. It remains, therefore, only to
show that Absolutism and Humanism cannot be com-
bined, and that Prof. Taylor's work, so far from affording
a basis for such a combination, really remains open to all

^ Italics mine.

2 Cp. p. 319 s.f. and p. 351 n.

^ Italics mine. Prof. Taylor now wishes it to be understood that " the trial
referred to was purely logical and a priori."

IX EMPIRICISM AND THE ABSOLUTE 239

the insuperable objections which have often been urged
against the Absolute from a human point of view.
Fortunately Prof. Taylor's lucidity greatly facilitates the
proof of this fundamental incompatibility : he has not
cared to remember that there are views which flourish
best, like fungi, in obscurity, and which it is fatal to
expose to the light, and so has probably done Absolutism
doubtful service by making too clear its constitutional
inability to meet the demands either of the human intel-
lect or of the human heart.

In proof of which let us select for consideration (A)
Prof. Taylor's account of the relations of ' appearance '
and ' reality,' (B) his criteria of ultimate reality, {C) his
conception of axioms and postulates, {D) his intellectualism,
and [E) his derivation of the Absolute, with the doctrine
of ' degrees of reality ' and the ' ontological proof.'

(v4) The antithesis of 'appearance' and 'reality' is
the bed-rock of Prof. Taylor's as of Mr. Bradley's philo-
sophy. But its assumption seems inadequately justified
by the simple remark that we must rid experience of its
contradictions (p. 2). Getting rid of contradictions is no
doubt one aspect of our efforts to harmonize our experi-
ence, but it is by no means the easiest or most logical
starting-point. For (i) before we can use the test of con-
tradiction we have to make sure that we know what ' self-
contradiction ' is to mean. (2) We have to make sure
that it does not mean that what we have to get rid of is,
not the ' self-contradictory ' ' appearance,' but the concep-
tions by which we have tried to know it. And (3) as
regards the self-contradiction itself, before we can get rid
of a contradiction we have to make sure that we Jiave a
real contradiction to get rid of. Before making contra-
diction our criterion, therefore, we must find a criterion to
discriminate between real and apparent contradictions.
Thus the antithesis, which it was to transcend, breaks out
again within the * absolute criterion ' itself^

1 The levity with which these difficulties have been ignored is admirably
brought out in Mind, N.S. xiv. 54, by Capt. Knox's masterly paper on "Mr.
Bradley's Absolute Criterion," and it is to be hoped that henceforth appeals to it
will be more cautious.

240 STUDIES IN HUMANISM ix

Nor again is success in removing contradictions quite
the alpha and omega of philosophy as intellectualists are
fond of assuming. If it were, philosophy would be in a
bad way. A severe construction of the principle would
work sad havoc with most philosophic systems, and Prof.
Taylor also would have been more judicious not to plume
himself upon a consistency too great for mortal logic.
For to a harsher stickler for literal consistency than
myself, many of Prof Taylor's statements would seem to
need a good deal of reconciling.

What does appear to me to be somewhat deplorable
is the way in which he misconceives the logical implica-
tions of this doctrine. He fails to make it clear that (i)
Nothing whatsoever can be condemned as ' appearance,'
unless the superior reality which corrects it, is already
known ; and (2) that even then, whenever the superior
reality is not a matter of immediate experience, its validity
has to be established by the control it gives us over the
' appearance.' ^ It is fallacious, therefore, to claim ulti-
mate reality for anything that is not (i) known or know-
able, and (2) useful in operating on our apparent realities.
Now as the Absolute has never yet been shown to be
capable of satisfying either of these tests, this would
conduct us to the distressing dilemma that we must
either renounce the Absolute or the favourite antithesis
between appearance and reality.

§ 8. {E) Incidentally it has already been mentioned
that Prof. Taylor liberally allows himself two criteria of
metaphysical reality. This seems to exceed the legiti-
mate luxury of speculation, and may perhaps seem as
gross a self-indulgence to the strict metaphysician as
bigamy does to the moralist. There is, however, no
doubt of the fact.^ The first of Prof Taylor's criteria
■ is empirical, and its formulations have been quoted
in § 6. Its ultimateness cannot be doubted, either as
stated or intrinsically. For any principle can be con-

1 For both these points see my essay on "Preserving Appearances,"
Humanism, pp. 191, 195.

- Prof. Taylor's reply on this point has seemed to me so unconvincing that I
have not altered this passage. Cp. Mind, xv. p. 91, with p. 381.

IX EMPIRICISM AND THE ABSOLUTE 241

ceived as a postulate, the value of which is established
by trial. It must be supposed therefore that Prof. Taylor,
when he states it, really means what he says, and is not
merely lax in his language. But Prof. Taylor retains
also an intellectualistic criterion which announces itself as
ultimate, and is put forward independently and indeed
with more formal pomp. It is Mr. Bradley's familiar
maxim that Reality is not self-contradictory. This it
is argued (p. 22) must be a metaphysical as well as
a logical principle. For to think truly about things is to
think in accord with their real nature. But to think
them as contradictory is not to think them truly.

In its essence this would seem to be a form of the
' ontological ' argument whereby a claim of our thought is
turned into a revelation about reality. But in addition
there is surely involved a twofold fallacy, viz. (i) an
equivocation in the word ' truth,' which is used both of
the internal self-consistency of thought and of its ' corre-
spondence with reality,' and (2) the unworkable view of
truth as the correspondence of thought with reality.^

And so it must surely be suggested that the principle
of Non-contradiction is a postulate, if ever there was one.
At one time (p. 19) Prof. Taylor seems to perceive this,
and speaks of the audacity ^ of making " a general state-
ment about the whole universe of being" as resulting
from our "refusing'^ to accept both sides of a contradic-
tion as true." But on the next page his faith in the
infallibility of postulation has become so robust that he
proceeds to treat it as knowledge about reality, and as
justifying a " confident " assertion that " it is positively
certain that Reality or the universe is a self-consistent
systematic whole ! " A mere pragmatist would gasp at
the audacity of such expeditious modes of overleaping all
distinctions between wish and fact, assertion and proof,
postulate and axiom ; but when Prof. Taylor is in the
mood no obstacles can check him.

§ 9. {C) It seems doubtful whether he has quite

^ For the first point see Humanism, p. 98 ; for the second, pp. 45-6.
2 Italics mine.

242 STUDIES IN HUMANISM ix

arrived at the perfect clearness which is so desirable with
regard to the relations of axioms and postulates. His
procedure, however, is instructive. Without formal
discussion he assumes (i) that there are axioms which
belong to the fundamental structure of our intellect (pp.
19. 37^) y (2) that postulates are methodological
assumptions, defensible on the ground of their practical
usefulness, but only so far as they actually succeed (pp.
227, 167, 169), and sometimes to be spoken of con-
temptuously as " mere practical postulates" (p. 239) ; (3)
that questions of ' origin ' (z.e. past history) have no
bearing on the ' validity ' of our conceptions. Origins,
indeed, he concedes whole-heartedly to the pragmatists
(P- 385)" historically the true is the useful, science an
offshoot of the arts (and why not all axioms promoted
postulates ?). But this does not matter, once the in-
tellectual ideal has been developed. It can judge, and
condemn, the very process which constituted the tribunal.
Hence (4) it is more likely than not that postulates do
not yield us final truth, as is indeed the case with the
postulates of which Prof. Taylor makes most explicit
mention. Hence (5) it appears that not only do logical
defects not impair the usefulness of a conception (p. 168),
but (p. 182) "any form of the causal postulate of which
we can make effective use necessitates the recognition of
that very Plurality of Causes, which we have seen to be
logically excluded by the conception of cause with which
science works " (or rather doesn't !), and " any form of the
principle in which it is true is useless, and any form in
which it is useful is untrue." This sweeping affirmation
of the validity of useless truth and methodological fiction
may be commended to the timid souls who shrink from
the more moderate inferences from the facts of postulation,
which are drawn by the pragmatists, viz. that the true is
liseful and that the useless is untrue} To others it will
seem queer that a doctrine of the thorough rationality of
the universe should reach the result that the highest
truths [e.g. the metaphysics of the Absolute) should be

■• Cp. Humanism, p. 38 ; Formal Logic, ch. xx. § 2.

IX EMPIRICISM AND THE ABSOLUTE 243

useless, while the useful, viz. the postulates, are mostly
untrue ! It should be noted (6) as a final perplexity that
on the same page (29) the psychical nature of Reality is
called both an initial postulate and a fundamental meta-
physical principle. Are we to infer from this that the
fundamental principles are seen to be postulates, or that
Prof. Taylor's language has relaxed under the strain of
accommodating his theory to the actual procedure of our
minds ?

These, then, are Prof. Taylor's dicta on the subject of
axioms and postulates, and certainly they seem variegated
beyond necessity. A living and rapidly growing philo-
sophy will no doubt always find it hard to sustain the
appearance of a rigid verbal consistency, and I do not in
the least hold with the cynics that demanding consistency
from a metaphysician is as absurd as demanding demon-
stration from a logician — because in neither case will you
get it ! A certain amount of inconsistency, therefore, is
human and pardonable. But I somewhat doubt whether
Prof. Taylor has not occasionally exceeded these limits.
I am more interested to observe (i) that it seems a
great exaggeration of the pragmatist doctrine of methodo-
logical assumptions to infer that because they are useful
they are probably untrue. For usefulness is no presumption
of untruth, but rather the reverse. It is not qua useful
that our assumptions are judged untrue, but qua useless.
To assume a principle, therefore, for methodological
reasons, i.e. as conducive to some proximate purpose, in
nowise prejudices its claim to ulterior truth. It is ' true '
so far as it goes, and whether it goes all the way is still
an open question. The more useful, therefore, it turns
out to be, the truer we judge it : whatever limitations it
develops render it useless for our ulterior purposes, and
become pro tanto motives for judging it untrue, and for
trying to recast it into a more widely applicable form.
It is therefore for pragmatism the reverse of true that
logical defects do not matter : only it contends that in
abstraction from its use a conception has no actual
meaning, and that it is the limitations which its use

244 STUDIES IN HUMANISM ix

reveals which persuade us of its logical defectiveness,
rather than vice versa.

(2) Prof. Taylor hardly seems to dispose of the strong
appeal which Pragmatism makes to the history of our
axioms by merely trotting out the musty old antithesis
of origin and validity. For in the first place to say that
* origin ' does not decide ' validity ' gives no positive in-
formation on the very vital questions as to what it does
decide, and what is the connexion of the two ; and,
secondly, overlooks the fact that the appeal is not really
to origin so much as to past history}

Concerning the origin indeed of anything whatsoever
not more than two fundamentally distinct views can be
entertained. We may either ( i ) welcome its novelty and
originality, and ascribe its appearance to a providential
interposition {Beta fioipa), hailing it as a gift of the gods,
or we may reluctantly recognize it as an ' accidental
variation.' Metaphysically these explanations are equiva-
lents. Or (2) we may sacrifice the recognition of novelty
to the vindication of systematic connexion, and labour to
show that, much as the apparent novelty has perturbed
us, nothing has occurred that was not fully contained in,
and determined by, its antecedents, so that the identical
content of Reality has suffered no alteration from the
occurrence. It is easy to predict that Intellectualism is
sure to prefer the second of these views, and to regard
the first as the very acme of irrationality.

But when it argues thus, it only shows, perhaps, how
far it is from understanding wherein irrationality consists
for its opponents. For to a pragmatist there is nothing
essentially irrational in the first account, because he has
not assumed that the value of a thing depends on, and
is eternally determined by, its origin. If the value of
everything depends on its efficiency in use, it is clear that
the rationality of the universe will consist not in its
a priori inclusion in a metaphysical Absolute, but just in
the actual way in which things manage to fit and work
together. Things, therefore, neither acquire nor lose any

^ Cp. Perso7ial Idealism, pp. 123-5.

IX EMPIRICISM AND THE ABSOLUTE 245

real rationality by their mode of origin. Axioms may arise
as postulates, thoughts as wishes, values as ' accidents ' —
their real validation in every case comes from subsequent
experience. Not that our Humanism can be indifferent
to the pragmatic equivalents ' chance or purposing in-
telligence.' Only it seems that this further question also
can only be decided ex post facto ^ when the novelties that
burst into the dull routine of a mechanically calculable
world have run their course, and we can judge them by
their fruits whether indeed they were of God.

Thus Pragmatism can rebut the charge of irrationality,
and indeed retort it, by pointing out that desirable as it
is for all our scientific purposes to regard the world as
wholly calculable, our anxiety may yet involve us
ultimately in absurdity, if it leads us totally to deny
the occurrence of real novelty. What should, therefore,
be pointed out to Prof. Taylor is that Pragmatism, in
appealing to the past history of conceptions for light upon
their value, is not laying stress on their origin. It is
assuming merely that the nature of a thing is revealed
empirically in its behaviour, and that therefore to under-
stand it, we should do well to make the most extensive
study of that behaviour. If, moreover, it should be in
process, it will be from a study of its history that we shall
see the drift of that process, and if that process should
admit of, or demand, teleological interpretation, we shall
thus be enabled to forecast its end, and to anticipate its
future, sufficiently for our purposes, even though the
whole nature of a thing could only be fully expressed in
its whole history. The attempt, on the other hand, to
determine the ' validity ' of a thing apart from its history
and prospects would seem sheer folly. For it tries to
contemplate in abstraction a mere cross-section of Reality
and claims final validity for what may only be a mis-
leading present phase of its total evolution.

Of course, however, the comparative merits of these
two procedures might be completely altered if it were
possible to pronounce upon the nature of a thing a priori.
For in that case there would be no need to wait uoon

246 STUDIES IN HUMANISM ix

experience, and science and history would have no
bearing upon ultimate Reality. This, no doubt, would
be convenient, and forms perhaps the hidden motive for
the anxiety of metaphysicians to attain some sort of
a priori at any cost,

(3) Just as Prof. Taylor failed to see the full logical
force of the pragmatist treatment of axioms, so too, I
fear, he has not quite apprehended the place which the
new views assign to intellection. For he appears to
think that pragmatist appeals to practical results can
be sufficiently met by saying that the intellect is not
wholly practical (pp. 12 1-2). It aspires beyond practical
success in action to logical consistency in thinking, and so
the ideals of truth and moral goodness fall asunder, and
metaphysics ' plays its game ' according to its own rules,
and demands that ultimate truth shall satisfy the intellect,
and that alone (pp. 384-6).

Unfortunately, however, these propositions do not
meet the pragmatist contentions, and, in so far as relevant,
are disputable. Not only does Prof. Taylor appear to
confuse the proposition that every (valid) thought aims at
a practical end with the assertion that it aims at moral
goodness (p. 385), but he has not realized that the
position he has to refute is that the intellect itself is
practical througJiout. If this be true, the truths of meta-
physics (if there are any) will be just as practical as the
rules of conduct and the methods of science, and it is vain
to pit ' logic ' against ' practice.' For the reference to
the use which verifies them can no more be eliminated
from the logical than from the ethical valuations.^

§ 10. (Z>) As a natural result of his failure to perceive
the full scope of Pragmatism, Prof. Taylor can never
really overcome the intellectualism of his school. He
does not indeed carry it to the extreme of denying the
rationality of the existence of anything but thought, and
follows Mr. Bradley in recognizing the existence of
' Feeling,' though he too leaves its relation to intellect in
obscurity. But the aim of philosophy is still for him to

' Cp. Hiananism, pp. 55, 160-3.

IX EMPIRICISM AND THE ABSOLUTE 247

understand, and not to transform and improve experience,
and that there is an inherent connexion between the two,
that we ' understand ' in order to transform, and that it
is the * transforming ' which assures us of the ' understand-
ing,' has not yet dawned upon him. He too, that is, has
not yet asked himself by what tests other than the prag-
matic we can or do pronounce upon the claim of a
proposition to validity. The intellectualist prejudice
which he has consequently been able to retain oozes out
spontaneously in all sorts of places. Thus (i) the
purposive operations of our intelligent manipulation of
experience are constantly striking him as ' arbitrary '
{^•g- PP- 35, 145. 175, 178, 256). He regards (2) an
' indefinite regress ' as a mark of unreality or ' appearance,'
without discriminating between the cases where it means
tJie defeat of a purpose, and those in which it means a
successful accomplishment of the same, and indicates
that an intellectual operation {e.g. ' counting ' or assigning
what for our purpose is the ' cause ' of an event) can be
performed as often as we please and need. Again (3), to
be free, he says, is to know one's own mind (p. 381 ).
And lastly, and most flagrantly, (4) Evil is merely the
intellectual incompleteness incident to the restricted purview
of ' finite ' beings (pp. 11 3-5, 12 1-2, 340, 387, 389, 393,

396).

§ 1 1. {E) And so we come to the infinite being to
which all else is ' appearance.' The Absolute appears
early in Prof. Taylor's philosophy and stays to the bitter
end. It is regarded as so axiomatic a principle that its
derivation is somewhat perfunctory (pp. 53-61). We
may, however, represent the steps of this derivation and
the assumptions they involve as follows : —

1. The universe is ultimately a system [ = an applica-
tion a priori of a human conception to reality, depending
on the validity of the ' ontological proof '].

2. If it is a system at all, it must be a rigid system,
and " must finally have a structure " (why only one ?) " of
such a kind that any purpose which ignores it will be
defeated." [But must not the sort of system which the

248 STUDIES IN HUMANISM ix

universe is be determined by experience rather than a
priori} And why should a system be absolutely rigid ?
Might it not be plastic, with no predetermined structure,
but with potentialities of varying response to varying
efforts ? Determinism (which, by the way. Prof. Taylor
professes to reject in Book iv. chap, iv.) is not so absolute
a postulate that a determinable indetermination in
Reality should be inconceivable. And why, lastly,
should the purposes which ignore the Absolute be
defeated by it ? Why should there not be purposes
which, though they ignore the Absolute, are ignored by
it ? Where, indeed, is there an indisputably valid
purpose which needs to take the Absolute into account ?]

3. Hence to deny the Absolute would be to reduce
the world to a mere chaos. [I have never found this
to be so. And do we as a matter of fact ever import
order into our experience by arguing down from the
Absolute ? Do we not rather start from apparent
chaos, and work our way out by the most empirical
experiments ?]

4. The whole of Reality is the one and only perfect
and complete individual (p. 113). [' C(c;w//^/^,' however,
we must be careful to understand in a merely intellectual
way as = ' all-embracing,' ' not omitting anything,' rather
than as ' feeling no want.' And yet I doubt whether
Prof. Taylor's readers will always succeed in distinguish-
ing these two senses when they peruse his eulogies on
the perfection and harmony of the Absolute.]

5. The Absolute is infinite experience, not like ours
limited, and still less collective.^ Though neither a self
nor a person,^ it is a conscious life which embraces the
totality of existence all at once and in a perfect,
harmonious, systematic unity,^ as the contents of its
experience. [But how, if it is not limited, can ' purpose '
be ascribed to it ? The time has surely come when the
apparently self-contradictory notion of an infinite purpose
should be either explained or dropped. How again can
one life embrace another, i.e. not merely know it, but

^ Pp- 343. 396. " Pp. 343. 346. ^ P- 60.

IX EMPIRICISM AND THE ABSOLUTE 249

experience it with its unique limitations? And this in
an indefinite number of conflicting and mutually con-
tradictory cases ! Surely the difficulties of the Kenosis
in Christian theology, of the combination of divine
omniscience with human ignorance, are child's play in
comparison with these vagaries of what calls itself a
rational metaphysic !]

6. The Absolute is out of Time and Space and
cannot evolve. Hence all things in our experience are
for it contradictory appearance. But this does not mean
'illusion.' For (p. 109) there are degrees of Reality or
individuality, and those things which are more complete
and more systematic are more real. Or, put otherwise,
things are more real the more they approximate to the
ideal of perfect self-consistency and the less the modifica-
tion which our knowledge would require to transform them
into complete harmony with themselves (pp. 37, 105, 108).

On this I remark that by the time Prof. Taylor has
proved Space and Time * appearances ' which cannot be
attributed to the Absolute, he appears to have quite
forgotten the vital distinction between perceptual and
conceptual Space and Time which he began (p. 243) by
calling of ' fundamental importance,'

This, however, is a slight matter compared with the
' saving doctrine ' of the Degrees of Reality, in stating
which Prof Taylor does not seem to have materially
improved its Bradleian form, (i) It still seems to be a
pure assumption that what appears to us to be the order
of ascertained reality, must coincide with the absolute
order of merit. (2) Nor is it in the least self-evident
that what seems to need less modification is actually
nearer to ultimate Reality and more likely to attain it.
The little more may be unattainable, and something
worlds away may be on the right line of development.
If, e.g., Prof Taylor had cast his prophetic eye on the
Jurassic age would he not have prognosticated the
descent of the fowls of the air from soaring Pterodactyls
of the period rather than from clod-hopping Dinosaurs ?
And yet it is certain that the former never evolved into

250 STUDIES IN HUMANISM ix

the true avian form, while the latter very probably did !
(3) How, we may ask, are we to know Jiow much
' modification ' or ' transformation ' a thing may need
to become ultimate reality ? Is this also to be known
a priori, or judged by casual appearances ? How can
we tell what the difficulties really are until we have
overcome them ? For our finite apprehension, therefore,
the doctrine of degrees is quite unworkable, and indeed
unmeaning. And (4) the criterion in any case is quite
delusive. For ex Jiypothesi it fails us : nothing ever de
facto reaches ultimate reality, or can be conceived as so
doing. We are carefully warned that a ' finite ' appear-
ance could do so only by ceasing to be finite. But
impossibility has no degrees, and hence to say ' you shall
become perfectly harmonious and fully real when you
become the Absolute ' is like saying ' you shall catch the
Snark on the Greek Kalends.'

7. Despite, however, the manifestly illusory character
of our hopes of becoming real by becoming the Universe,
we are still bidden to believe (p. 16) that the Absolute
realizes our aspirations and satisfies our emotions.
Even though (p. 411) "the all-embracing harmonious
experience of the Absolute is the unattainable^ [!] goal
towards which finite intelligence and finite volition are
alike striving," we must have faith (p. 394) that "all
finite aspiration must somehow^ be realized in the
structure of the Absolute whole, though not necessarily
in the way in which we . . . actually wish it to be
realized"! For (p. 386) "it is simply inconceivable in
a rational universe that our abiding aspirations should
meet with blank defeat." It is not to this final
apocalypse that Prof. Taylor applies the incisive words
" an uncritical appeal to unknown possibilities " : but
the phrase seems singularly apt.

§ 12. Now that we have seen what the claims of the
Absolute are, we can proceed to examine its logical
foundations. No great acuteness is needed to perceive
that the whole tissue of affirmations concerning the

^ Italics mine.

IX EMPIRICISM AND THE ABSOLUTE 251

Absolute depends logically on the question whether the
conception of a whole can be applied to Reality a priori,
and whether consequently it can validly be taken as
certain that Reality forms a harmonious system.

In other words, the * ontological proof,' i.e. the trans-
mutation of a conceptual ideal into absolute fact, is a
vital necessity for Prof Taylor's metaphysic. He him-
self is well aware of this, and furnishes us (pp. 402-3)
with a revised version of it, drawn from the armoury of
Bradleian logic.

Ev-ery idea, he tells us, has a reference to reality,
outside its own existence, which it means or stands for.
*' In its most general form, therefore, the ontological
argument is simply a statement that reality and meaning
for a subject mutually imply each other." But (as we
saw) thoughts represent the reality they mean with very
different degrees of adequacy, and so, of reality. Only
the thought of a perfectly harmonious system can be an
adequate representation of the reality which it means.
As therefore we have in the Absolute a way of thinking
about Reality " which is absolutely and entirely internally
coherent, and from its own nature must remain so, however
the detailed content of our ideas should grow ifi complexity^
we may confidently say that such a scheme of thought
faithfully represents the Reality for which it stands."

In this form, then, the ' ontological proof satisfies Prof.
Taylor ; but it hardly brings out what is really its
cardinal feature, viz. the a priori character of its claim.
Unless reality can be predicated a priori of its ideal, the
' proof is worthless for the purposes of absolutist meta-
physics. For the conception of the Absolute must be
valid of any and every course of experience in a wholly
non-empirical and a priori way, to enable us to pro-
nounce our knowledge and our opinion of it to be
incapable of modification by the course of events. It
follows that the Absolute must be rigid, and its con-
ception one which differs radically in its nature and
meaning from any other idea. For other ideas acquire

1 Italics mine.

252 STUDIES IN HUMANISM ix

their meaning in the process of experience, which moulds
and modifies them, and is continually testing the validity
of their ' reference to reality.' Their ' objective reference '
is at first no more than a formal claim, which experience
must confirm and develop and show to be really
applicable. Whereas in the Absolute's case, the mere
making of a claim, by reason, I suppose, of its peculiarly
sweeping and impudent character, is held to be sufficient
warrant of its a priori truth.

In other words. Prof Taylor's argument is a petitio
principii ; it amounts only to a covert re-statement of the
contested claim. The dispute was whether a subjective
demand of ours could authenticate the existence of
something which satisfies that demand.^ The ' proof '
consists in reiterating that the meaning of the conception
involves this same claim to reality. But what we still
want to know is whether this claim can be sustained,
whether reality will actually conform itself to our con-
ceptions, whether the meaning we attribute to them is
actually true. And to assure us of this we are given
nothing but the Absolute's own assurance ! This may
be rationalism, but it does not look rational.

§ 13. Yet the facts are, of course, plain enough.
The Absolute is a postulate of the extremest and most
audacious kind. And so far from its being true that our
concept's claim to reality is in this instance independent
of experience, it is dependent upon every experience and
distinguished from other such claims only by the greater
difficulty of subjecting it to any adequate verification.
The question of whether, say, my idea of * dog ' ' corre-
sponds with the reality,' is easily settled by observing
whether what I take to be a ' dog ' behaves in the
manner I expect a ' dog ' to behave. But to establish
that all Reality behaves in a manner conformable with
my notion of a perfectly harmonious system, and that
my notion may consequently be safely predicated of

^ It is amusing that this should turn out to be the essence of the ' onto-
logical proof,' when one remembers how wroth rationalists get when they
imagine that pragmatists are attempting this very feat !

IX EMPIRICISM AND THE ABSOLUTE 253

Reality, is a desperate undertaking. Well might rational-
ists imagine that if it was not done a priori, it could not
be done at all ! For the claim is so large that its
empirical proof might well seem impracticable : because
the Absolute is all-embracing, the claim has to be
substantiated in the case of all things in existence.

Of course it can still be postulated, and indeed this
may be expedient. For it is doubtless methodologically
just as judicious to give the universe, as the dog, a good
name, if you do not wish to quarrel with it. But to prove
my postulate, to make sure that the universe really
deserves my praises, and that my eulogy is not a fabric
of adulation on a basis of desire, I should have to be in a
position to explain away every trace and appearance of
disharmony ! It is only our interested bias, therefore, that
leads us to argue ^ that the apparent evil must be really
good. If we were quite impartial, i.e. void of interest in
the matter, it would be intellectually just as easy, and as
tenable, to infer from our mixed universe that the apparent
good was really evil.

That the Absolute is really a postulate is all but con-
ceded by Prof. Taylor in one passage,^ where he argues
that as it is the satisfaction of a human aspiration, and
as his peace of mind depends on speculation about it, it
must be regarded as pragmatically ' useful,' and therefore
valid.

To which I reply that the path from usefulness to
validity leads through verification. Not that Pragmatism
has the slightest objection to the principle of an Absolute
conceived as a postulate. And if it makes Prof. Taylor
happy to believe that there is such a thing, and he won't
be happy till he gets it, by all means let him try it, and
see whether it will give him his heart's desire. In matters
of postulation all are called, and all may hope to be

^ As Prof. Taylor does on p. 396.

2 P. 317 n. The passage may be read as an argiimentum ad homitiem, but
fails as such, because (i) we have always conceded the fullest liberty to postulate,
and (2) Prof Taylor has ignored, as our critics have usually done, the necessity
of verifying postulates. Besides, the Absolute is palpably a postulate, so mistaken
and ineffective that it never develops into the ' necessity of thought ' it is assumed
to be.

254 STUDIES IN HUMANISM ix

chosen. But this reduces the claim originally made to
quite modest dimensions. The Absolute was put forward
as an actually existing reality which no sane intelligence
could deny. What, therefore, we have rejected was a
pretended axiom of universal cogency ; what it may yet
be possible to retain is a queer sort of emotional postulate.
§ 14. Yet I wonder whether the Absolute, after
undergoing so capital a diminution of its logical status,
will continue to find favour with our metaphysicians. It
was cherished for two reasons. In the first place, as a
response to a supposed necessity of thought, that of
conceiving the universe as one, i.e. as a systematic order.
This has turned out to be a mere craving, and a doubt
has arisen as to whether this postulate fully understands
its own nature. Is it really all that we need demand of
our experience that it should be an ordered whole ? Do
we not demand also that its order should be worthy of our
approbation} To any one not pledged to intellectualism
at all costs, the thesis must seem indefensible. For the
demand for intellectual order is but part of a greater moral
claim, without which it is not really intelligible. For
what has happened ? We claim to have been enabled by
the * Absolute ' to think the universe as a whole : but only
by leaving out, as irrelevant and unreal ' appearance,' all
of its initial features. The result is the self-contradiction
that the world is said to become a whole only by extruding
its parts. Surely a grotesque derision of our postulate !
To satisfy its real meaning, therefore, we must retrace our
steps, and argue either that the world is not a whole at
all, if that conception involves the reduction of all
empirical reality to illusion, or that if it is, the conception
has been grossly misconceived, and must be amended in
such wise as to admit of a real interaction of the world's
constituents, of a real purpose, and a real history, and a
real achievement of a good end. Either, therefore, it is
no use to postulate an Absolute, because as conceived it
cannot explain the facts of experience, or we must
postulate an Absolute which is plastic, and not rigid, and
not subversive of the ' appearances ' in which we live.

IX EMPIRICISM AND THE ABSOLUTE 255

But this latter alternative is ruled out by the other
main incentive to Absolutism. The Absolute was
cherished, in the second place, as a means to what all
Rationalism craves, viz. an indefeasible guarantee against
the contingency of experience. This needs, perhaps, a
word of explanation. When we have seen that as there
is no such thing as * pure reason ' we can no longer define
the rationalist as one who is guided by it, it becomes
necessary to redetermine his essential type of mind in
pragmatic terms. And when we make a psychological
study of his character and his works, we shall find that
his master passion is not so much a love of reason as a
fear of experience, I should define him, therefore, as
essentially a person who will 7iot trust experience^ who
wants at all costs to be insured against the risks, surprises,
and novelties of life, and to feel that, in principle, nothing
can occur which has not been provided for in the closed
circle of existence. What he has failed to perceive is merely
that such a guarantee can be obtained only at the cost of
rendering all change and process unmeaning and illusory.
For he can only obtain it by dissociating the stable,
immutable, ideal Reality from the flux of human reality ;
but once these are dissevered, what power can the former
retain over the latter ? The Absolute is set above change
and process ; certainly : but change and process as illusions
continue to dominate the illusory world wherein we are
involved inextricably, nor can any demand for their cessa-
tion be urged upon an Absolute which already possesses
eternally the absolute reality to which we everlastingly
aspire in vain.

Regarding them, then, from this point of view we see
that all the infinite convolutions and contortions of a priori
philosophies mean just this, that the contingency of the
future, the dependence on experience of what most we
value, must ' somehow ' be eliminated. It was thus as
a method of satisfying a natural (and not wholly ignoble)
instinct that rationalists had recourse to the Absolute.
But its power to satisfy this emotional demand depended
on its strict apriority to all experience. It is not enough

256 STUDIES IN HUMANISM ix

that the universe should really be a harmonious system
and that we should gradually come to ' discover' this. It
is not enough that the potential harmony should be a
valid postulate which we may help to realize. What was
demanded was an initial and absolute assurance beyond
all possibility of peradventure. And if the ontological
argument is disallowed, the Absolute no longer yields
this. Why then should it continue to be postulated ?

§ 15. But may not the Absolute still retain its place
as a postulated satisfaction for other desires ? I hardly
think so. Man craves no doubt for an object of worship,
and when in sore distress will worship almost anything.
But how can the Absolute afford him this satisfaction, if
finite minds can hardly worship it without " a certain
element of intellectual contradiction" (p. 399)? Again,
we desire a moral ideal : but though Prof. Taylor
desperately invokes the doctrine of degrees to show that
goodness possesses more reality than badness, and that
therefore the Absolute is not morally indifferent, he is
driven to confess that it is " not one of the combatants ;
it is at once both the combatants and the field of combat." ^
Again, those of us in whom intellectual abstractions have
not dried up the fount of human sympathy and feeling
desire at least an explanation of the existence of Evil
(pending the achievement of its entire obliteration) : but
what is the response to this demand which Absolutism
proffers ? It regards Evil merely as the necessary incom-
pleteness of the parts of a whole !

It is difficult to discuss this proposition in a temperate
manner. For all I know there may be people intel-
lectualist enough to contemplate without a twinge the
dismembered corpses on a reeking battlefield and to say :
' That only shows how incapable the parts are of becoming
the whole.* But that this defect is regarded as the source
of all evil is certainly not true, psychologically, of ordinary
human feeling. Man is not miserable because he is not
the universe, but because he seems to be flung without
rhyme or reason into a discordant scheme of things, and

1 p. 399 «•

IX EMPIRICISM AND THE ABSOLUTE 257

exposed to cruelty, injustice, and disappointment, disease,
decay, and death. I should imagine too that a desire
to be the Absolute was a sufficiently rare idiosyncrasy.
Certainly I myself have no trace of it ; the prospect
would appal me, not only because of its responsibilities,
but also on account of its dulness.^ Prof. Taylor, of
course, may be differently constituted. If so, psychologic
science should certainly record this curious fact about
him ; but I sincerely hope that there may be an error in
his auto-diagnosis, and that his grievances are really of a
more human calibre. And logically also the proposition
that because the Whole is perfect, all its parts must he im-
perfect seems far from obvious : to me it would seem far
more plausible that if the Whole were perfect, all its parts
must be perfect too, and that if any part so much as seems
imperfect, the Whole cannot be perfect. And why, to
raise a prior question, should it be assumed, apart from
our interests and desires, that a whole is necessarily perfect ?
Why should not the intrinsic scheme of things be evil at
the core, i.e. utterly discordant or imperfect in any nameable
degree ? Has any philosopher the right to allow his
intellectualist proclivities to burke the whole question of
pessimism in this flagrant way ?

It would seem, then, that regarded as a postulate, the
Absolute is a bad one, because it does not work, nor secure
us what we wanted : regarded as an axiom it stands —
and falls — with the ontological fallacy. Is it not there-
fore as a mere private fad, rooted in the idiosyncrasy of
a few philosophic minds, that it can continue to figure,
and that we must continue to respect it ? But will not
those who desire real answers to the real questions of life
more and more audibly protest against the imprisonment
of all human thought in the dismal void of the conception
of a Whole which can neither be altered nor improved,
and demand the liberty to think the world as one in which
progress and goodness can be real ?

1 For the Absolute, were it conscious, would have to be a solipsist. Cp.
Essay x.

IS 'ABSOLUTE IDEALISM' SOLIPSISTIC ?^

ARGUMENT

§ I. The affinity of solipsism to idealism as such. § 2. An amended defi-
nition of solipsism ; § 3, applies to the Absolute ; and, § 4, escapes
the stock objections. § 5. The difficulties of absolute solipsism ; § 6,
destroy absolute idealism ; and, § 7, are avoided only by its self-
elimination.

§ I. The possibility of solipsism and its consequences is
one of many important philosophic questions which after
long and undue neglect seem now at length to be attract-
ing attention. The question of solipsism in its various
aspects really has a most vital bearing on the ultimate
problems of metaphysics. It is easy to see that every
idealistic way of interpreting experience cannot honestly
avoid an explicit and exhaustive discussion of its relations
to solipsism. For every approach to idealism is so closely
beset on either side by the precipices of solipsism that
every step has to be careful, and a false step must at once
be fatal. The course of realistic philosophies, no doubt,
is in this respect less dangerous : but they, too, are
interested in the problem. They have a direct interest
in precipitating all idealisms into solipsism. They tend,
however, to treat it too lightly as a reductio ad absurdum,
without sufficiently explaining why. Its absurdity
appears to be regarded as practical rather than as
theoretical, but even so the instinctive feeling that solip-
sism ' won't do ' should be elaborated into a conclusive

1 This appeared in the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientijic
Methods for Feb. 15, 1906 (vol. iii. No. 4).

258

X ABSOLUTISM AND SOLIPSISM 259

proof that it must of necessity lead to impracticable con-
sequences. And this might not prove to be quite so easy
as it is customary to assume. Lastly, as a final proof of
the prevalent vagueness of philosophic thought on this
subject, it may be mentioned that it has even been
debated whether radical empiricism is not solipsistic.^

It would seem, therefore, decidedly opportune to
inquire further into the philosophic affinities of solipsism,
and more particularly into its unexplored relations to
absolute idealism. For that form of idealism has hitherto
escaped suspicion by reason of the loudness of its pro-
testations against solipsism. But such excessive protests
are themselves suspicious, and it should not be surprising
to find that whether or not solipsism is a bad thing and
an untenable, whether or not other idealisms can escape
from it, absolute idealism, at all events, contains implica-
tions which reduce it to a choice between solipsism and
suicide.

§ 2. To show this, our first step will have to be the
amending of the current definition of solipsism. For by
reason, doubtless, of the scarcity or non-existence of
solipsists interested in their own proper definition, its
statement is usually defective. When solipsism is defined
as the doctrine that as all experience is my experience, I
alone exist, it is taken for granted (i) that there can be
only one solipsist, and (2) that he must be ' I ' and not
' you.'

Both of these assumptions, however, are erroneous.
Indeed, the full atrocity of solipsism only reveals itself
4 when it is perceived that solipsists may exist in the
plural, and attempt to conceive me as parts of tJie7n.
The definition, therefore, of solipsism must not content
itself with providing for the existence of a single solipsist,
i.e. with stating how ' I ' could define ' my' solipsism (if I
were a solipsist). It should provide me also with a basis
for argument against ' your ' solipsism and that of others.
For that is the really intolerable annoyance of solipsism.
If I felt reckless or strong enough to shoulder the respon-

^ See the Journal of Philosophy, vol. ii. No. 5 and No. 9.

26o STUDIES IN HUMANISM x

sibility, I might not object to a solipsism that made me
the all by emphasizing the inevitable relation of experience
to an experient ; the trouble comes when other experients
claim a monopoly of this relation in the face of conflicting
claims, and propose to reduce me to incidents in their
cosmic nightmare.

Solipsism, therefore, should be conceived with greater
generality. It should cover the doctrine that the whole
of reality has a single owner and is relative to a single
experient, and that beyond such an experient nothing
further need be assumed, without implying that I am the
only ' I ' that owns the universe. Any '/' will do. Any
I that thinks it is all that is, is a solipsist. And solipsism
will be true if any one of the many ' I's ' that are, or may
be, solipsists is right, and really is all that is. Provided,
of course, he knows it.

§ 3. How, now, can this amended definition be applied
to the case of absolute idealism ? We must note first that
my (our) experience is not to be regarded as wholly
irrelevant to that philosophy. Indeed, in all its forms it
seems to rest essentially on an argument from the ideality
of my (our) experience to the ideality of all experience.
For the former is taken as proof that all reality is
relative to a knower, who, however, is not necessarily
the individual knower, but may (or must) be an all-
embracing subject, sustaining us and all the world besides.
Indeed absolute idealists have so convinced themselves of
the moral and spiritual superiority of their absolute
knower that they habitually speak in terms of con-
temptuous disparagement of their 'private self as 'a,
miserable abstraction.' ^ And from the standpoint of their
private self such language is no doubt justified ; it inflicts
on it salutary humiliations and represses any tendency it
might otherwise have to expand itself solipsistically into
the all.

But how does it look from the standpoint of the
absolute self? For that, too, has been conceived as
a self, and therefore as capable of raising solipsistic

^ E.g. Mr. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 259.

X ABSOLUTISM AND SOLIPSISM 261

claims. Can the absolute self be deterred from excesses
of self-elation by the reflection that it is not, after all, the
totality of existence ? Assuredly not ; for ex hypotJiesi
that is precisely what it is. It includes all things and is
all things in all things. If it cannot be said to 'create'
all things, it is only on the technical ground that since a
subject implies an object, and the world must be coeternal
with its ' creator,' * creation ' is an impossible idea. Never-
theless, the dependence of all things on the absolute self
must be absolute. And if it is conscious, it must know
this. For else the ultimate truth about reality would be
hidden from the absolute knower, though apparently re-
vealed to the (comparative) ignorance of quite a number
of philosophers.

But is not this equivalent to saying (i) that the
Absolute must be a solipsist, and (2) that solipsism is the
absolute truth ?

§ 4. The inference is plain, and confirmed also by the
admirable fitness of the Absolute to play the solipsist in
other ways. For the arguments against solipsism have
derived what success they have achieved from the habit of
conceiving it as the freak of an individual self ; they recoil
helplessly from an absolute solipsism. Even Mr. Bradley
would probably admit, e.g. that the Absolute, being out of
time, would not be perplexed by the necessity of tran-
scending its present experience in order to complete itself.

Indeed, it may here be remarked that Mr. Bradley's
refutation of solipsism in Appearance and Reality, ch. xxi.,
seems to fail for (at least) three reasons, (i) Solipsism
no doubt does not rest upon ' direct ' experience merely,
i.e. it is not a congenital, but an acquired, theory. Still
' indirect ' experience must sooner or later return to and
enter into direct present experience, under penalty of
ceasing to be ' experience ' at all. And so the solipsistic
hypothesis, though doubtless it is not what any one starts
with, may suggest itself as the explanation of experience
and be confirmed, even as the solipsistic interpretation of
part of it, viz. our dream-experience, is now confirmed,
namely by the discovery that there is after all nothing

262 STUDIES IN HUMANISM x

in direct experience which forbids its adoption. Mr.
Bradley, therefore, fails to pin solipsism down to the
alternative ' based either on direct or on indirect experience.'
It can rest on both. (2) He objects to the enriching of
the ' this ' of direct experience by the results of indirect
experience, on the ground that they are imported, i.e. were
not originally in it (p. 251). Yet immediately after, on
p. 254, he disavows the relevance of the argument from
origins ! (3) His argument never really gets to, and
consequently never really gets at, the solipsistic stand-
point, and he always presupposes the more usual assump-
tions as to " a palpable community of the private self
with the universe." But the solipsist has not, and can-
not have, a private self to distinguish (except in appear-
ance) from the universe, just because he is a solipsist and
includes all things. His position, therefore, leaves no
foothold for Mr. Bradley's argument.

§ 5. But though the inference from absolute idealism
to solipsism thus seems unavoidable, it would be affec-
tation to pretend that it involves no difificulties. We need
not count among these the fact that it will probably be
exceedingly unpalatable to many absolute idealists, and
may even compel them to temper their denunciations
of subjective idealism. For, after all, they are men (by
their own confession) accustomed to follow truth where-
soever she flits, and to sacrifice their personal feelings.
But there does seem to arise a deplorable difficulty about
bringing into accord the Absolute's point of view with
our own.

For the Absolute, solipsism is true and forms a stand-
point safe, convenient, and irrefragable. But for us there
arises an antinomy. We have on the one hand to admit
that solipsism is absolute truth, seeing that the stand-
point of the Absolute is absolute truth, and that our im-
perfect human truth is relative to this standard. Now
it is highly desirable, from the standpoint of absolute
idealism, that human truth should be identified with
absolute wherever this is possible. For to admit any
divergence between the two is very dangerous. If such

X ABSOLUTISM AND SOLIPSISM 263

divergence should culminate in the assertion that human
truth can never attain to absoluteness, it would at once
destroy the value of absolute truth as a human ideal.^
An absolute truth which no human mind can enunciate
and hold to be true acts only as a sceptical disparagement
of human knowledge, which, moreover, would be gratuitous
and untenable. The absolute idealist, therefore, must seek
to maintain that every absolute truth which human minds
can entertain is also human truth. And here, fortunately,
this is feasible. Solipsism is a view which human minds
can entertain. If, therefore, solipsism is true sub specie
Absoluti^ and we can know it to be so, we ought to think
it so. We ought, that is, to think it true that ' I am all
that is.' The Absolute has proved it. And not only for
itself, but equally for any other ' I.' For regarded as a
function to which all experience is related, no ' I ' differs
from any other. Any * I,' therefore, may claim to profit
by the truth of solipsism. Indeed this is only reasonable ;
for if there is only to be one self, why not let it be the only
self of which one is directly sure, viz. oneself? It will be
awkward, no doubt, at first, to have to conceive a plurality
of solipsists, each claiming to be the sole and sufficient
reason for the existence of everything — but I suppose we
might get used to that.

§ 6. It seems, however, a more serious implication that
each of them, if his claim were admitted, would render
superfluous the assumption of an Absolute Knower
beyond himself. Instead of being absorbed in the
Absolute, as heretofore, each individual solipsist would
swallow up the Absolute. This consequence may seem
bizarre, but in metaphysics at least we must not refuse to
follow valid arguments to the queerest conclusions.

The same conclusion follows also in another way.
The Absolute ex Jiypothesi is and owns each ' private self.'
And the Absolute is a solipsist. This feature, therefore,
of the truth must be reflected in each private self. They
must all be solipsists. But this is merely the truth of
solipsism looked at from the standpoint of the private

^ Cp. Essay viii. § 4.

264 STUDIES IN HUMANISM x

self. It must claim to be all because the Absolute is all,
and it is the Absolute as alone the Absolute can be
known. The absorption of the Absolute and the indi-
vidual thus is mutual, because it is merely the same truth
of their community of substance differently viewed.

On the other hand, it seems most unfortunate that in
practice we all negate the truth of solipsism, and Absolute
or no, must continue so to do. Even if the impractic-
ability of solipsism had been exaggerated, and philosophy
had been too hasty in assuming this, the working
assumptions of ordinary life would be rendered ridiculous,
and our feelings would be hurt, if solipsism were true.
It may be contended, however, that the practical absurdity
and inconvenience of a theory is no argument against it,
at least in the eyes of a thoroughgoing intellectualism.
And a thoroughgoing intellectualism would be a very
formidable philosophy, if any one had had the courage to
affirm it.

But even waiving this, does it not remain an intellectual
difficulty that we have ourselves destroyed the path that
led from idealism to the Absolute ? The Absolute was
reached (rightly or wrongly) as a way of avoiding the
solipsistic interpretation of experience, which it was
feared idealism might otherwise entail. It now turns out
that the Absolute itself is the reason for insisting on the
truth of solipsism. And yet if solipsism is true, there is
no reason at all for transcending the individual experience
of each solipsist ! It would seem, therefore, that we can-
not admit the truth of solipsism without ruining our
Absolute, nor admit our Absolute without admitting the
truth of solipsism. We are eternally condemned, therefore,
either to labour under an illusion, viz. that that is false
which is really true, and which we really know to be
true though we cannot treat it as true without leaving our
only standpoint, the human, or to reject the very source
and standard of truth itself.

§ 7. In conclusion, I can only very briefly indicate what
seems to me to be a way by which absolute idealism can
escape these difficulties, even though it may perhaps lead

X ABSOLUTISM AND SOLIPSISM 265

it into further troubles. Of course, from the standpoint
of absolute idealism the truth of solipsism is only valid
if the Absolute is assumed to be conscious. We can,
therefore, avoid the fatal admission by assuming that it is
not. The Absolute, that is, is unconscious mind, as
von Hartmann long ago contended. But what is un-
conscious mind? The inherent weakness of the 'proof
of absolute idealism lies in its proceeding from the finite
human mind, which we know, to an * infinite ' non-human
mind very imperfectly analogous to it, and (apparently)
incapable of being known by us. This transition becomes
more and more hazardous the further we depart from the
analogy with human minds. It may fairly be disputed,
therefore, whether there is any sense in calling an un-
conscious mind a mind at all. But if the unconscious
Absolute ceases to be conceived as mind, what becomes
of the idealistic side of absolutism ? Among the ab-
solutists many, no doubt, would be quite willing (under
pressure) to move towards the conclusions thus outlined ;
but would not this involve a final breach with their
theological allies, to whom the chief attraction of absolute
idealism has always been that it appeared to provide for
a ' spiritual ' view of existence ? But it might possibly be
contended, on the other hand, that neither philosophy nor
theology would suffer irreparable loss by the self-elimina-
tion of absolute idealism. And this contention is at
least deserving of attention.

ABSOLUTISM AND THE DISSOCIATION OF
PERSONALITY '

ARGUMENT

I. The discrepancy between absolutist theory and the apparent facts of life
arising from (l) the impet-vioiisncss and (2) the discords of the individual
minds supposed to be included in the Absolute. II. But if experience
is appealed to, a plurality of minds can be conceived as subliminally
united, and communicating ' telepathically.' III. The possibilities of a
' dissociated personality ' as exemplified in the ' Beauchamp ' family.

IV. These may be transferred to the Absolute. Its dissociation = the
'creation of the world.' The solution of the 'one and many' problem.

V. Would a dissociated Absolute be defunct or mad ?

§ I. Among the major difficulties which Absolutism en-
counters in its attempts to conceive the whole world as
immanent in a universal mind, must be reckoned what
may be called the imperviousness of minds, which seem
capable of communicating with each other only by
elaborate codes of signalling and the employment of
material machinery, and the very unsatisfactory character
of the relations between the subordinate minds which are
supposed to be included in the same Universal Conscious-
ness. There appear, indeed, to exist very great contrasts
between the internal contents of the alleged Universal
Mind and the contents of a typically sane human mind.
In a sane human mind the contents of its consciousness
exist harmoniously together ; they are not independent
of, nor hostile to, each other ; they succeed or even
supplant each other without a pang, in a rational and

^ This essay appeared in the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific
Methods for Aug. 30, 1906 (iii. 18).

266

XI DISSOCIATION OF PERSONALITY 267

agreeable way ; even where there is what is meta-
phorically called a mental ' struggle,' the process is not
painful to the contents, but if to any one, to the mind as
a whole which feels the struggle and the distress. If, on
the other hand, we conceive ourselves as thoughts of a
Universal Mind, what a chaos we must think that mind
to be ! How strangely dissevered into units which seem
independent and shut up in themselves ! How strange
that each of its thoughts should fight for its own hand
with so little regard for the rest, and fight so furiously !
How strange, in short, upon this hypothesis that the
world should appear as it does to us ! Well may
absolutists be driven to confess " we do not know why
or how the Absolute divides itself into centres, or the
way in which, so divided, it still remains one." ^

On the face of the apparent facts, therefore, it cannot
be denied that the assertions of absolute idealism are not
plausible. In contrast with its monism the world on the
face of it looks like the outcome of a rough-and-tumble
tussle between a plurality of constituents, like a coming
together and battleground of a heterogeneous multitude
of beings. It seems, in a word, essentially pluralistic in
character. And if, nevertheless, we insist on forcing on it
a monistic interpretation, does it not seem as though that
monism could only be carried through on the lowest
plane, on which existences really seem to be continuous,
viz. as extended bodies in space ? In other words, must
not our monism be materialistic rather than idealistic ?
The ideal union of existences in an all-embracing mind
seems a sheer craving which no amount of dialectical
ingenuity can assimilate to the facts, and no meta-
physic can a priori bridge the gulf between them and
this postulate.

There are, however, so many to whom the idealistic
monism of Absolutism forms a faith which satisfies their
spiritual needs, that it should be doing them a real service
to aid them in thinking out their fundamental conception
with the utmost clearness and precision, and it should not

^ F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality ', p. 527.

268 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xi

be taken as an impertinence to point out how much more
there is to be said in its favour than its advocates appear
as yet to have discovered. For if only ' absolute idealists '
will consent to appeal to experience and empirical evidence,
modern psychology provides analogies which remove some
of the difficulties which most embarrass them.

§ 2. The imperviousness and mutual exclusiveness of
individual minds may be conceived and explained by an
extended use of the conception of the threshold of con-
sciousness. It is, of course, well known that this is vari-
able, that, e.g., the raising of the li7nen which accompanies
intense mental concentration, thrusts into subconscious-
ness a multitude of processes which normally are conscious.
On the other hand, much that normally goes on in the
organism without consciousness, or full consciousness,
may become conscious by an abnormal lowering of the
threshold. There is nothing absurd, therefore, in the
idea that we might become conscious again of every
function of the body, say, of the circulation of the blood,
of the growth of every hair, of the life of every cell.
Indeed, the only reason why we are not now so conscious
would seem to be that no useful end would be served
thereby, and that it is teleologically necessary to restrict
consciousness to those processes which cannot yet be
handed over with impunity and advantage to a material
mechanism.

Now it is clearly quite easy to push this conception
one step further, and to conceive individual minds as
arising from the raising of the threshold in a larger mind,
in which, though apparently disconnected, they would
really all be continuously connected below the limen, so
that on lowering it their continuity would again display
itself, and mental processes could pass directly from one
mind to another. Particular minds, therefore, would be
separate and cut off from each other only in their visible
or supraliminal parts, much as a row of islands may
really be the tops of a submerged mountain chain and
would become continuous if the water-level were suddenly
lowered. Or to use a more dynamic analogue, they

XI DISSOCIATION OF PERSONALITY 269

might be likened to the pseudopodia which an amoeba
puts forth and withdraws in the course of its vital
function. Empirically this subliminal unity of mind might
be expected to show itself in the direct transmission of
ideas from one mind to another, of ideas, moreover, that
would spring up casually, mysteriously, and vaguely, in a
mind in which they do not seem to originate. Now this
is on the whole the character of the alleged phenomena
of * telepathy,' and if absolutists really want to convince
men of the plausibility of their ideas, they could adopt no
more effective policy than that of establishing the reality
of telepathy on an irrefragable basis.

§ 3. Abnormal psychology, moreover, yields further
enlightenments. No one can read Dr. Morton Prince's
fascinating book on the Dissociation of a Personality^
without being dazzled by the light thrown on the nature
of personality by the tribulations of the * Beauchamp '
family. Here were B. I., 'the Saint'; B. III., 'Sally';
and B. IV. ' the Idiot ' (not to mention the minor
characters) all apparently complete beings with ex-
pressions, beliefs, tastes, preferences, etc., of their own, so
diverse and distinctive that no one, who had once dis-
criminated them, could doubt which of them was at any
time manifesting through the organism they shared in
common. And yet they were all included in a larger
self, which was sometimes aware of them and through
which knowledge occasionally passed from one to the
other. ' The Saint ' and ' the Idiot ' were shown to be
nothing but products of the dissociation of ' the original
Miss Beauchamp,' who, when she was recalled into exist-
ence by the astute manipulations of Dr. Prince and put
together again, remembered the careers of both, and
recognized them as morbid states of herself. In the
relations between ' Sally ' and ' the real Miss Beauchamp '
the common ground lay apparently still deeper, and the
restoration of the latter did not mean the reabsorption of
the former, but only her suppression ; still it may fairly
be assumed that their common relation to the same

^ Longmans, 1906.

270 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xi

body must indicate the existence of a plane on which (if
it could be reached) ' Sally ' and ' the real Miss Beau-
champ ' would be unified, and would coalesce into a
single being. It was thereby shown that a large amount
of superficial diversity and dissociation might co- exist
with a substantial unity beneath the surface. The several
' Miss Beauchamps ' were to all appearance independent
personages, variously cognitive of each other, hating,
loving, despising, pitying, fearing, fighting each other,
capable of combining together or opposing each other,
and so enjoying their troubled life that most of them
were determined to maintain their existence, and resented
the restoration of ' the real Miss Beauchamp ' as their
own extinction. The amusing history of their contentions
reads very much like that of a very disorderly girls' school ;
but we can hardly flatter ourselves that the case is too
abnormal to have any application to ourselves, because
our normal life too plainly exhibits the beginnings of
similar dissociations of personality in us, e.g. in dreams,
which the ' Sallies ' within us clearly weave out of the
contents of our minds whenever we are sufficiently
disturbed to be susceptible to their wayward pranks.

The great philosophic lesson of the case is, however,
this, that the unity of a common substance only con-
stitutes a very partial and imperfect community of
interests, and is no sort of guarantee of harmony in the
operations and aspirations of the personalities that
possess it.

§ 4. If now we apply this lesson to the universe, it is
clear that we have only to multiply indefinitely the pheno-
mena presented by this remarkable case to get an exact
representation of the cosmic situation as conceived by
Absolutism. On this theory all existences would be
secondary personalities of the one Absolute, differing
infinitely in their contents, character, and capacity, and
capable of co-existence and concurrent manifestation to a
much greater extent than were the members of the
' Beauchamp ' family, in which this power was possessed
only by ' Sally.' We should accordingly all be the

XI DISSOCIATION OF PERSONALITY 271

'Idiots/ 'Saints,' and 'Sallies' of the Universal Beau-
champ Family which had been engendered by the ' dis-
sociation ' of the Absolute. This might not be altogether
pleasing to all of us (especially to those who, like the
writer, would seem to have been predestined to be among
the ' Sallies ' of the Absolute) ; but the idea itself would
be quite conceivable and free from theoretical objection.

Indeed, it would throw much light upon many
theoretic problems. If discordance of contents is no bar
to unity of substance, the extraordinary jumble of con-
flicting existences which the world appears to exhibit
would become intelligible, and would cease to be a cogent
argument in favour of pluralism. The disappearance,
again, of personalities at death might merely portend that
they were temporarily driven off the scene like ' B. I.'
or ' B. IV.,' when the other, or ' Sally,' controlled the
organism ; ' dead,' that is, in the sense of unaware of what
was going on and unable to manifest, but yet capable of
reappearing and resuming the thread of their interrupted
life after ' losing time.' And so support might here be
found for the doctrines of palingenesia and of a cyclic
recurrence of events in an unchanging Absolute.

Again, it would become possible to explain the nature
and to define the date of ' Creation ' better than hitherto.
The ' Creation of the World ' would mean essentially the
great event of the ' dissociation ' of the original ' One '
into a ' Many,' and would be comparable with the
catastrophe which broke up ' the original Miss Beauchamp '
in 1893. In the Absolute's case the date itself could not,
of course, be fixed with such precision, but the date of
the disruption of the One into a Many and consequent
creation (or, perhaps, rather ' emanation ') of the world
might be defined as the date at which its present ' dis-
sociation ' set in. This change itself it would hardly be
possible, and would certainly not be necessary, to regard as
an intelligible event. For we should be absolved from the
duty of trying to explain it by the fact that ex hypothesi
it was the dissociation of the rational repose of the One.

As regards that One again some very pretty problems

272 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xi

would arise, e.g. as to whether it continued to exist
subliminally, able though not willing to recover its unity
and to reabsorb the world, or whether its existence was
really suspended, pending the restoration of its unity and
the reabsorption of the Many, or whether its * dissociation '
into a plurality of related beings was to be regarded as a
final and irretrievable act entailing the permanence of the
plural world thus generated. The last alternative no
doubt would be that most directly indicated by the
analogy of the ' Beauchamp ' case. For Miss Beauchamp
could hardly have recovered her unity without the skilful
intervention (from the outside) of Dr. Morton Prince.
But in the world's case nothing analogous would seem to
be conceivable. As by definition the Absolute is the
totality of things, it can never be exposed to outside
stimulation, and therefore could not, if once ' dissociated,'
reunite itself, under curative suggestions from without.

The same conclusion results from a comparison of this
conception of the relation of the One and the Many with
the very interesting anticipation of it which may be found
in Mainlander's PhilosopJiie der Erlosung. Mainlander
very acutely pointed out that in order to explain the
unity of the universe it was quite superfluous to assume a
still existing One. It was quite enough to ascribe to the
M my a common origin, a common descent from the One.
Being a pessimist, he further suggested, therefore, that the
One had committed suicide, i.e. dissolved itself into a
Many, who sharing in its original impulse were also
slowly dying out, so that the aimless misery of existence
would in the end be terminated by a universal death.
By substituting, however, the notion of a ' dissociation ' of
the One for that of its ' suicide,' it is possible not only to
adduce a definite psychological analogy, but also to render
the process more intelligible and to safeguard the con-
tinuance of the world. Altogether, therefore, the vexed
problem of the One and the Many, the puzzle of how to
conceive the reality of either without implicitly negating
that of the other, seems to be brought several steps nearer
to an intelligible solution by these empirical analogies.

XI DISSOCIATION OF PERSONALITY 273

§ 5. Not that, of course, these conceptions would entail
no drawbacks. It is a little startling, e.g., at first to have
to think of the Absolute as morbidly dissociated, or even
as downright mad. But a really resolute monist would not
allow himself to be staggered by such inferences. For,
in the first place, the objection to a mad Absolute
is only an ethical prejudice. And he would have read
Mr. Bradley to little purpose,^ if he had not learnt that
ethical prejudices go for very little in the realm of high
metaphysics, and that the moral point of view must not be
made absolute, because to make it so would be the death
of the metaphysic of the Absolute. The fact, therefore,
that to our human thinking a dissociated Absolute would
be mad, would only prove the limitations of our finite
intelligence and should not derogate from its infinite perfec-
tion. Moreover, secondly, if the Absolute is to include the
whole of a world which contains madness, it is clear that,
anyhow, it must, in a sense, be mad. The appearance,
that is, which is judged by us to be madness, must be
essential to the Absolute's perfection. All that the
analogy suggested does is to ascribe a somewhat higher
* degree of reality ' to the madness in the Absolute, and
to render it a little more conceivable just how it is
essential.

Less stalwart monists may, no doubt, be a little dis-
mayed by these implications of their creed, and even dis-
posed to develop scruples as to whether, when pursued
into details, its superiority over pluralism is quite so
pronounced as they had imagined ; but in metaphysics
at least we must never scruple to be consistent, nor
timorously hesitate to follow an argument whithersoever
it leads. It must, therefore, be insisted on that absolutism
is in these respects a perfectly thinkable, if not exactly
an alluring, theory. And we may well display our
intellectual sympathy with it by helping to work out its
real meaning more clearly than its advocates have hitherto
succeeded in doing, or the public in understanding.

^ See Appearance and Reality, ch. xxv.

XII
ABSOLUTISM AND RELIGION

ARGUMENT

§ I. The philosophic breakdown of Absolutism. But may it not really be a
religion, and to be judged as such ? § 2. The pragmatic value of
religion, and academic need of a religious philosophy. § 3. The history
of English Absolutism : its importation from Germany as an antidote to
scientific naturalism. § 4. Its success and alliance with theology. Its
treatment of its own 'difficulties.' § 5. Its revolt against theology.
The victory of 'the Left.' § 6. The discrepancy between Absolutism
and ordinary religion, exemplitied in (i) its conception of ' God,' and (2)
its treatment of ' Evil.' § 7. The psychological motives for taking
Absolutism as a religion. § 8. Its claim to have universal cogency
compels us, § 9, to deny its rationality to our minds, (i) The 'craving
for unity ' criticized. (2) The guarantee of cosmic order unsatisfactory.
(3) An a priori guarsLTxtee illusory. (4) The meaninglessness of monism.
An ' Infinite whole ' a contradiction. The inapplicability of absolutist
conceptions. § 10. The inability of Absolutism to compromise its claim
to universality, leads it to institute a Libermii Veto and to commit
suicide.

§ I. We have constantly had occasion to criticize the
peculiar form of rationalistic intellectualism which styles
itself Absolute Idealism and may conveniently be called
Absolutism, and to observe how it has involved itself
in the most serious difficulties. It has been shown, for
example (in Essay ix.), that the proof of the Absolute
as a metaphysical principle, and its value when assumed,
were open to the gravest objections. It has been shown
(in Essays ii.-vii.) that the absolutist theory of knowledge
has completely broken down, and must always end in
scepticism. It has been shown (in Essay x.) that if the
idealistic side of the theory is insisted on, it must develop
into solipsism. It has been shown (in Essay xi.) that

274

XII ABSOLUTISM AND RELIGION 275

if a serious attempt is made to derive the Many from the
One, to deduce individual existences from the Absolute,
the result inevitably is that the Absolute is either ' dis-
sociated,' or mad, or defunct, because it has committed
suicide in a temporary fit of mental aberration.

In short, if a tithe of what we have now and formerly ^
had to urge against the Absolute be well founded,
Absolutism must be one of the most gratuitously absurd
philosophies which has ever been entertained. And if
so, how comes it that men professedly and confessedly
pledged to the pursuit of pure unadulterated truth can
be found by the dozen to adhere to so indefensible a
superstition ?

To answer this question will be the aim of this essay.

It is not enough to reply, in general terms, what at
once occurs to the student of human psychology, viz.
that intellectual difficulties are hardly ever fatal to
an attractive theory, that logical defects rarely kill
beliefs to which men, for psychological reasons, remain
attached. This is doubtless true, but does not enable us
to understand the nature of the attraction and attachment
in this case. Nor can it be reconciled with the manifest
acumen of many absolutist thinkers to suppose that they
have simply failed to notice, or to understand, the objec-
tions brought against their theory. If, therefore, they
have failed to meet them with a logical refutation, the
reason must lie in the region of psychology.

This reflection may suggest to us that we have, perhaps,
unwittingly misunderstood Absolutism, and done it a
grave injustice.

For we have treated it as a rational theory, resting its
claim on rational grounds, and willing to abide by the
results of logical criticism. But this may have been a
huge mistake. What if this assumption was wrong ?
What if its real appeal was not logical, but psychological,
not to the ' reason ' but to the feelings, and more
particularly to the religious feelings ? Does not Mr.
Bradley himself hint that philosophy (his own, of course)

1 Cp. Humanism, pp. 2-4, 14, 59, 191, 371-2 ; and Riddles of the Sphinx, ch. x.

276 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xn

may be " a satisfaction of what may be called the
mystical side of our nature " ? ^

If so, a fully-developed case of Absolutism would
never yield to merely philosophic treatment. It might
be driven to confess the existence of logical difficulties,
but these would not dismay it. It would go on believing
in what to its critics seemed the absurd and impossible,
with a pathetic and heroic faith that all would ' some day ' ^
be explained ' somehow.' ^

§ 2. This possibility, at any rate, deserves to be
examined. For religions are as such deserving of re-
spectful and sympathetic consideration from a Humanist
philosophy. They are pragmatically very potent influ-
ences on human life, and the religious instinct is one of
the deepest in human nature. It is also one of the
queerest in the wide range of its manifestations. There
are no materials so unpromising that a religion cannot be
fashioned out of them. There are no conclusions so
bizarre that they cannot be accepted with religious
fervour. There are no desires so absurd that their satis-
faction may not be envisaged as an act of worship, lifting
a man out of his humdrum self.

There is, therefore, no antecedent absurrlity in the
idea that Absolutism is at bottom a religious creed, a
development of, or a substitute for, or perhaps even a per-
version of, some more normal form of religious feeling, such
as might well be fomented in an academic atmosphere.

Once this theory is mooted, confirmations pour in on
every side. The central notion of Absolutism, the
Absolute itself, is even now popularly taken to be
identical with the ' God ' of theism. It seems, at any
rate, grand and mysterious and all-embracing enough to
evoke, and in a way to satisfy, many of the religious
feelings, as being expressive of the all-pervasive mystery
of existence.

There is, moreover, in every university, and especially

^ Appeai-ance and Reality, p. 6.

2 Cp. Dr. McTaggart's Hegelian Dialectic, ch. v.

* Cp. Mr. ^TdLdley's Appearance and Reality, passim.

xn ABSOLUTISM AND RELIGION 277

in Oxford, a standing demand for a religious, or quasi-
religious, philosophy. For, rightly or wrongly, established
religions always cater in the first place for the unreflective.
They pass current, and are taught, in forms which cannot
bear reflection, as youthful minds grow to maturity. Con-
sequently, when reflection awakens, they have to be
transformed. This is what gives his opportunity to the
religious philosopher. And also to the irreligious philo-
sopher, who ' mimics ' him. They both offer to the
inquiring minds of the young a general framework into
which to fit their workaday beliefs — a framework which
in some respects is stronger and ampler, though in others
more meagre and less lovely, than the childlike faith
which reflection is threatening to dissolve, unless it is
remodelled. Hence the curious fascination, at a certain
stage of mental development, of some bold ' system ' of
metaphysics, which is accepted with little or no scrutiny
of its wild promises, while in middle age the soul soon
comes to crave for more solid and less gaseous nutriment.
It is proper, then, and natural, that an absolutist meta-
physic should take root in a university, and flourish
parasitically on the fermentation of religious instincts
and beliefs.

§ 3. The history of English Absolutism distinctly bears
out these anticipations. It was originally a deliberate
importation from Germany, with a purpose. And this
purpose was a religious one — that of counteracting the
anti-religious developments of Science. The indigenous
philosophy, the old British empiricism, was useless for
this purpose. For though a form of intellectualism, its
sensationalism was in no wise hostile to Science. On the
contrary, it showed every desire to ally itself with, and to
promote, the great scientific movement of the nineteenth
century, which penetrated into and almost overwhelmed
Oxford between 1850 and 1870.

But this movement excited natural, and not un-
warranted, alarm in that great centre of theology. For
Science, flushed with its hard-won liberty, ignorant of
philosophy, and as yet unconscious of its proper limitations,

278 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xii

was decidedly aggressive and over-confident. It seemed
naturalistic, nay, materialistic, by the law of its being.
The logic of Mill, the philosophy of Evolution, the faith
in democracy, in freedom, in progress (on material lines),
threatened to carry all before them.

What then was to be done ? Nothing directly ; for on
its own ground Science seemed invulnerable, and had
a knack of crushing the subtlest dialectics by the knock-
down force of sheer scientific fact. But might it not be
possible to change the venue, to shift the battle-ground
to a region ubi instabilis terra innabilis unda, where the
land afforded no firm footing, where the frozen sea could
not be navigated, where the very air was thick with mists,
so that phantoms might well pass for realities — the
realm, in short, of metaphysics ? Germany in those days
was still the promised land of the metaphysical mystery-
monger, where everything was doubted, and everything
believed, just because it had been doubted, and the
difference between doubt and belief seemed to be merely
a question of the point of view : it had not yet become
great by the scientific exploitation of 'blood and iron '
(including organic chemistry and metallurgy).

Emissaries accordingly went forth, and imported
German philosophy, as the handmaid, or at least the
governess, of a distressed theology. Men began to speak
with foreign tongues, and to read strange writings of Kant's
and Hegel's, whose very uncouthness was awe-inspiring
and terrific. Not that, however, it should be supposed
that the Germanizers were all consciously playing into
the hands of clericalism, as Mark Pattison insinuated.
T. H. Green, for example, was, by all accounts, sincerely
anxious to plunge into unfathomed depths of thought,
and genuinely opposed to the naturalistic spirit of the
age ; and if there was anything transparent about his
mind, it was assuredly its sincerity. His philosophy — so
it was commonly supposed by Balliol undergraduates in
the eighties — was encouraged by the Master (Jowett) on
the ground that, inasmuch as metaphysics was a sort of
intellectual distemper incidental to youth, it was well

xu ABSOLUTISM AND RELIGION 279

that it should assume a form not too openly divergent
from the established religion,^

Others, again, welcomed the new ideas on pedagogical
grounds, being haunted by the academic dread lest Mill's
Logic should render philosophy too easy, or at least
contrast too markedly with the crabbed hints of the
Posterior Analytics. So German Absolutism entered the
service of British theology, soon after its demise in its
native country.

§ 4. The results at first seemed excellent, theologically
speaking. The pressure of ' modern science ' was at once
relieved. It soon began to be bruited abroad that there
had been concocted in Germany a wonderful ' metaphysical
criticism of science,' hard to extract and to understand,
but marvellously efficacious. It was plain, at any rate, that
the most rabid scientists could make no reply to it — because
they had insuperable difficulties in comprehending the terms
in which it was couched. Even had they learnt the
lingo, the coarser fibre of their minds would have pre-
cluded their appreciating the subtleties of salvation by
Hegelian metaphysics. So it was rarely necessary to do
more than recite the august table of the a priori categories
in order to make the most audacious scientist feel that he
had got out of his depth ; while at the merest mention
of the Hegelian Dialectic all the ' advanced thinkers ' of
the time would flee affrighted.

The only drawback of this method was that so few
could understand it, and that, in spite of the philosophers,
the besotted masses continued to read Darwin and
Spencer, Huxley and Haeckel, But even here there
were compensations. What can never be popularized,
can never be vulgarized. What cannot be understood,
cannot be despised or refuted. And it is grateful and
comforting to feel oneself the possessor of esoteric
knowledge, even when it does not go much beyond
ability to talk the language and to manipulate the catch-
words.

^ In reality, however, he seems latterly to have deplored Green's influence as
tending to draw men away from the practical pursuits of life.

28o STUDIES IN HUMANISM xn

As regards the direct support German philosophy
afforded to Christian theology, on the other hand, it would
be a mistake to lay too much stress on it. Kant's three-
fold postulation of God, Freedom, and Immortality could
not add much substance to an attenuated faith. And
besides the agnostic element in Kant, which had seemed
well enough so long as Mansel used it to defend orthodoxy,
was recognized as distinctly dangerous, when Spencer,
soon afterwards, proceeded to elaborate it into his
doctrine of the Unknowable. Hegel's ' philosophy of
religion,' indeed, promised more. It professed to identify
God the Father with the ' thesis,' God the Son with the
' antithesis,' and God the Holy Ghost with the ' synthesis '
of a universal ' Dialectic,' and thus to provide an
a priori rational deduction of the Trinity. But it could
hardly escape the acuteness of the least discerning
theologians that, though such combinations might seem
' suggestive ' as ' aids to faith,' they were not quite
demonstrative or satisfactory. The more discerning
realized, of course, the fundamental differences between
Hegelian philosophy and Christian theology. They
recognized that the Hegelian Absolute was not, and
could not be, a personal God, that its real aim was the
self-development, not of the Trinity, but of an immanent
' Absolute Idea,' and that the world, and not the Holy
Ghost, was entitled to the dignity of the Higher Synthesis.
They felt also the awkwardness of supporting a religion
which rested its appeal on a unique series of historical
events by a philosophy which denied the ultimate
significance of events in Time.

So, on the whole. Absolutism did not prove an
obedient handmaid to theology, but rather a useful ally :
their association was not service so much as symbiosis,
and even this was eventually to develop into hostile
parasitism.

The gains of theology were chiefly indirect. Philo-
sophy instituted a higher, and not yet discredited, court
for the trial of intellectual issues, to which appeal could
be made from the decisions of Science. And it checked.

xn ABSOLUTISM AND RELIGION 281

and gradually arrested, the flowing tide of Science, if
not among scientific workers, yet among the literary
classes.

It supported theology, moreover, by a singularly useful
parallel. Here was another impressive study of the
abstrusest kind, with claims upon life as great and as
little obvious as those of theology, and yet not open to
the suspicion of being a pseudo-science devised for the
hoodwinking of men. For was not philosophy a purely
intellectual discipline, a self-examination of Pure Reason ?
If it was abstract, and obscure, unprofitable, hard to
understand, and full of inherent ' difficulties,' why con-
demn theology as irrational and fraudulent for exhibiting,
though to a less degree, the like characteristics ?

Thus could theologians use the defects of philosophy
to palliate those of theology, and to assuage the doubts
of pupils, willing and anxious to clutch at whatever
would enable them to retain their old beliefs, by repre-
senting them as inevitable, but not fatal, imperfections
incidental to the make-up of a ' finite ' mind.

These services, moreover, were largely mutual. It was
the religious interest, and the need of studying theology,
which brought young men to college, and so provided
the philosophers with hearers and disciples.

Theology reciprocated also by infusing equanimity
into philosophy with regard to its own intrinsic ' diffi-
culties.' For, alas, nothing human is perfect, not even
our theories of perfect knowledge ! The new philosophy
soon developed most formidable difficulties, which would
have appalled the unaided reason. It was taught
to ' recognize ' these * difficulties ' (when they could no
longer be concealed), and to plead the frankness of
this recognition as an atonement for the failure to
remove them, to analyse their grounds, or to reconsider
the assumptions which had led to them. Or, if more
was demanded, it was shown that they were old, that
similar objections- had been brought ages ago (and
remained similarly unanswered) ; and, finally, the philo-
sophic exposition of the nature of Pure Reason would end

282 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xn

in an exhortation to a reverent agnosticism, based on
a recognition of the necessary limitations of the human
mind ! Only very rarely did bewildered pupils note the
discrepancy between the mystical conclusion and the
initial promise of a completely rational procedure : after
a protracted course of abstract thinking the exhausted
human mind is only too apt to acquiesce in a confession
of failure, which seems to equalize the master's and the
pupil's intellect. Lest we should seem, however, to be
talking in the air, let us adduce a notorious example of
such a * philosophic ' treatment of a ' difficulty.'

It has now for more than a quarter of a century been
recognized by absolutist philosophy that there exists at
its core a serious gap between the human and the super-
human ' ideal ' which it deifies, and that it possesses no
logical bridge by which to pass from the one to the other.
Thus T. H. Green professes to discover that knowledge is
only possible if the human consciousness is conceived as
the ' reproduction ' in time of an Eternal Universal Con-
sciousness out of time. But as to the nature of the
connexion and interaction between them, as to how the
Eternal Consciousness renders human minds its ' vehicles,'
he can, of course, say nothing. Nay, he is finally driven
to confess that these two ' aspects ' of consciousness,
qua human and qua eternal, " cannot be comprehended in
a single conception."^ In other words, 'consciousness'
is merely a word used to cover the fundamental dis-
crepancy between two incompatible conceptions, and an
excuse for shirking the most fundamental of philosophic
problems.

This being so, it is interesting to see what his friends
and followers have made of a situation which ought
surely to be intolerable to a rational theory. Has its
rationalistic pride been in any way abated ? Not a whit.
Has its doctrine ceased to be taught ? Not at all. Has
it been amended ? In no wise. Have attempts been

1 Prolegomena to Ethics, § 68. Capt. H. V. Knox has drawn attention to
the vital importance of this extraordinary passage [Mind, N.S. No. 33, vol. ix.
p. 64), and Mr. Sturt has also commented on it in Idola Theatri, p. 238.

xii ABSOLUTISM AND RELIGION 283

made to bridge the chasm ? No ; but its existence has
repeatedly been ' recognized.' Mr. Bradley ' recognizes '
it as the problem how the Absolute ' transmutes '
* appearances ' ( = the world of our experience) into
' reality ' ( = his Utopian ideal) ; but his answer is merely
that the trick is achieved by a gigantic ' somehow.' Mr.
Joachim * recognizes ' it as ' the dual nature of human
experience,' ^ but will not throw over it even a mantle of
words. Prof. J. S. Mackenzie ' recognizes ' it by remark-
ing " that a truly conceptual object cannot, properly
speaking, be contained in a divine mind, any more than in
a human mind, unless the divine mind is something wholly
different from anything that we understand by a mind." ^
Has the difficulty led to any analysis of its grounds, or
revision of its assumptions ? Not to my knowledge. It
has been ' recognized,' and is now recognized as ' old ' ^
and familiar and venerable ; and what more would you
have ? Surely not an answer .'' Surely not a Rationalism
which shall be rational ? It is, and remains, a ' difficulty,'
and that is the end of it !

§ 5. But though in point of intellectual achievement
our * Anglo-Hegelian ' philosophy must be pronounced to
be stationary, its mundane history has continued, and its
relations to theology have undergone a startling change.
As it has become more firmly rooted, and as, owing to
the reform of the universities, the tutorial staff of the
colleges has ceased to be wholly clerical, the alliance
between Absolutism and theology has gradually broken
down. Their co-operation has completely disappeared.
It now sounds like an untimely reminiscence of a bygone
era when Mr. Bradley vainly seeks to excite theological
odium against his philosophic foes.^

In part, no doubt, the need for the alliance has grown
less. Science is far less aggressive towards theology than
of yore. It has itself probed into unsuspected depths of
being, which make blatant materialism seem a shallow

^ Cp. Essay vi. § 3.

2 Mind, XV. N.S. 59, p. 326 n. Italics mine.

* As we have seen, it is essentially as old as Plato.

^ Cp. Essay iv. § 15.

284 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xii

thing, and have destroyed the illusion that it knows all
about ' matter.' It has become humble, and begun to
wonder whether, after all, its whole knowledge is more
than ' a system of differential equations which work ' ; in
other words, it has ceased to be dogmatic, and is dis-
covering that its procedure is, in truth, pragmatic.

Absolutism, on the other hand, has grown secure and
strong and insolent. It has developed a powerful ' left
wing,' which, as formerly in Germany, has triumphed
within the school, and quarrelled with theology. Mr.
F. H. Bradley, Dr. McTaggart, Prof. B. Bosanquet, Prof.
A. E. Taylor, Mr. H. H. Joachim, Prof, J. S. Mackenzie are
among its best-known representatives. The ' right wing '
seems to have almost wholly gone from Oxford, though
it still appears to flourish in Glasgow. As for the ' centre,'
it is silent or ambiguous.^

But about the views of the Left there can be no
doubt. It is openly and exultingly anti-theological. It
disclaims edification. It has long ago made its peace with
Naturalism, and boasts that it can accept all the conclu-
sions of the latter, and reproduce them in its own language.
It has now swallowed Determinism whole and without a
qualm.^ As a whole, it has a low opinion of ethics, and
it his even lapsed into something remarkably resembling
hedonism.^ In short, its theological value has become a
formidable minus quantity, which is mitigated only by the
technicality of its onslaughts, which in their usual form can
be appreciated only by the few. Still, even this consola-
tion fails in dealing with Dr. McTaggart's most recent
and entertaining work, Some Dogmas of Religion^ which
puts the case against Christianity quite popularly, with a
lucidity which cannot be surpassed, and a cogency which
can be gainsaid only by extensive reliance on the pragmatic
considerations which Dr. McTaggart has conspicuously

1 Prof. J. A. Stewart's invitation to the school to refute Mr. Bradley before
continuing the use of edifying phrases has met with no response whatever (see
Mind, N.S. xi. p. 376).

^ T. H. Green was a ' soft ' determinist.

2 Cp. F. H. Bradley's Appearance and Reality, ch. xxv. ; A. E. Taylor's
Problem of Co7iduct ; and J. M. E. McTaggart's Hegelian Cosmology.

xu ABSOLUTISM AND RELIGION 285

neglected. He has, indeed, relented in some few respects,
and no longer defines ' God ' as an impossible being, as he
did in his Hegelian Cosmology, and now admits that a
finite God is thinkable ; but he still prefers to call himself
an atheist, and there is no saying how much mischief his
popular style might not do among the masses were not
his book published at half-a-guinea net.

All this is very sad in many ways ; but one could
pardon these attacks on theology if only they advanced
the cause of truth. For we, of course, in no wise hold a
brief for theology, which we have reason to regard as in
the main an intellectualistic corruption of an essentially
pragmatic religion. Unfortunately, however, the prosperity
of Absolutism does not mean an end to our intellectual
troubles. We have already seen that, when consistently
thought out, it ends in scepticism. And it has not merely
quarrelled with theology, but is undermining a far greater
thing, namely, religion, in its ordinary acceptance, as we
must now try to understand.

§ 6, Absolutism may be itself a religion, but it diverges
very widely from what is ordinarily known as such, and
relies on motives which are not the ordinary religious feel-
ings. This may be shown as regards the two most crucial
cases — the problem of ' God ' and the problem of Evil.

( I ) As regards the conception of ' God ' the abso-
lutist and the religious man differ essentially. The term
* God ' is used by philosophers, perhaps unavoidably,
with a great latitude of meanings, and so disputants too
often finish with the confession " your * God ' is my
' devil ' ! " But still, if we apply the pragmatic test, it
must be possible to discover some points in which the
consequences of a belief in a ' God ' differ from those of
a belief in no ' God.' ' God,' that is, if we really and
honestly mean something by the term, must stand for
something which has a real influence on human life. And
in the ordinary religious consciousness ' God ' does in
point of fact stand for something vital and valuable in
this pragmatic way. In its most generalized form ' God '
probably stands for two connected principles. It means

286 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xii

(a) a human moral principle of Help and Justice ; and {h)
an aid to the intellectual comprehension of the universe,
sometimes supposed to amount to a complete solution of
the world-problem. In the ordinary religious conscious-
ness, however, these two (rightly) run together, and coalesce
into the postulate of a Supreme Being, because no intel-
lectual explanation of the world would seem satisfactory, if
it did not also provide a moral explanation, and a response
to human appeals.

But in Absolutism these two sides of ' God ' fall hope-
lessly asunder. In vain does T. H. Green, after conceiving
' God ' as a purely intellectual principle, declare that ' God '
for religious purposes must also be such as to render
morality possible.^ For Absolutism conceives pure in-
tellectual satisfaction as self-sufficing, and puts it out of
relation to our moral nature, nay, to all human interests.
But if so, the moral side of ' God ' must wholly disappear.
If the Absolute is God, ' God ' cannot be personal, or
interested in persons as such. Its relation to persons
must be a purely logical relation of inclusiveness. The
Absolute includes everything, of course, and ex officio.
But the Whole cannot be partial^ in either sense of the
term. It must sustain all its ' parts ' impartially, because
it approves of them all alike — inasmuch as it maintains
them in existence.

The ordinary religious consciousness, on the other
hand, definitely postulates a partial God, a God to succour
and to sympathize with us poor ' finite ' fragments of a
ruthless Whole. As Mr. Bradley scornfully but quite
truly puts it)^ " the Deity, which they want, is of
course finite, a person much like themselves, with
thoughts and feelings mutable in the process of time.^
They desire a person in the sense of a self, among
and over against other selves, moved by personal
relations and feelings towards these others — feelings
and relations which are altered by the conduct of

1 Works, ii. p. 74 n.

- Appearance and Reality'^, p. 532. Italics mine.

^ Cp. Plato's description of an ' Idea' which should be really human in the
Sophist, 249 ; and p. 67.

XII ABSOLUTISM AND RELIGION 287

the others. And, for their purpose, what is not this, is
really 7tothifig. Of course for us to ask seriously if the
Absolute can be personal in such a way would be quite
absurd." The absolutist ' God,' therefore, is no moral
principle. Neither has it scientific value, even when taken
as an intellectual principle. For it is not the explanation
of anything in particular, just because it is the explana-
tion of everything in general ; and what is the meaning of
a general explanation which explains nothing in particular,
is apparently a question it has not yet occurred to our
absolutists to ask.

It is quite clear, however, that the Absolute is not
God in the ordinary sense, and many of our leading
absolutists are now quite explicit in avowing this, and
even in insisting on it. As we have already seen what
Dr. McTaggart thinks (§ 5), let us once more consult Mr.
Bradley's oracle. " We may say that God is not God,
till he has become all in all, and that a God which is all
in all, is not the God of religion." " We may say that
the God, which could exist, would most assuredly be no
God." " Short of the Absolute, God cannot rest, and
having reached this goal, he is lost and religion with
him." Nor has any theologizing absolutist ever dared
to question these responses.^

(2) The problem of Evil is probably the most funda-
mental, and certainly the most pressing, of religious
problems ; it is also that most manifestly baffling to
ordinary religious feeling. It is, however, divisible into a
practical and a theoretic problem. The former of these
is simply the problem of how de facto to get rid of evils.
This is a difficult, but not a desperate or irrational,
endeavour. The theoretic problem, on the other hand, has
been mainly manufactured by theology. It arises from
the impossibility of reconciling the postulated goodness
with the assumed omnipotence of God. This problem
troubles the religious consciousness only in so far as it
assents to these two demands. Now this in a manner it
may certainly be said to do. The postulate of God's

^ Appearance and Reality'^ , pp. 448, 449, 447.

288 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xii

goodness is, as we have seen, essential. But the assent
to the notion of divine omnipotence is never more than
verbal. In practice no real religion can ever work with
a single, unrestricted principle. Without a duality, or
plurality, of principles the multiplicity of the cosmic
drama cannot be evolved. Hence the religious conscious-
ness, and all but the most ' philosophic ' forms of theology,
do in point of fact conceive evil as due to a power which
is not God, and somehow independent : it is variously
denominated ' matter,' * free-will,' or * the devil.' The
more ' philosophic ' theologians try to conceive a ' self-
limitation ' either of the divine power or of the divine
intellect ; in the latter case following Leibniz's suggestion
that in creating the world God chose the best universe
he could think of. But on the whole the theoretic
explanation of Evil is acknowledged to form a serious
' difficulty.'

What now has Absolutism to say on the subject ?
It cannot, of course, construe God's omnipotence with the
amiable laxity of popular religion ; it must insist on the
strictest interpretation. Its * God ' must be really all in
all ; the Whole cannot be controlled or limited by
anything, either within it or without it. It must be
perfect : its seeming imperfection must be an illusion
of imperfect finite beings — though, to be sure, that
illusion again would seem to be necessary and essential
to the perfection of the Whole.

It is clear that such a theory — which at bottom
coincides with that of Eleaticism — must make short work
of the religious attempts to understand the existence of
Evil. Human * free-will ' it has long schooled itself to
regard as " a mere lingering chimera " ; ^ the resistance of
* matter ' it gaily consigns to ' the devil,' who in his turn
is absorbed with ' God ' in the ' Higher Synthesis ' of
the Absolute. Evil, therefore, is not ultimately and
metaphysically real. It is * mere appearance,' ' tran-
scended,' ' transmuted,' etc., in the Absolute along with
all the rest.

^ Appearance and Reality'^, p. 435 n.

xu ABSOLUTISM AND RELIGION 289

All this is very pretty and consistent and * philo-
sophical.' But it is hardly a solution of the problem,
either practically or theoretically. Not practically be-
cause it throws no light on the question why anything
in particular should be as it is ; nor yet theoretically,
because it is avowedly a mystery how the Absolute
contrives to transcend its ' appearances.'

Thus the net outcome is that the religious conscious-
ness, so far from obtaining from ' philosophy ' any
alleviation of its burdens, not to speak of a solution of
the problem of Evil, is driven forth with contumely and
rebuked for having the impudence to ask such silly
questions ! Assuredly Mr. Bradley does well to remark
that (absolutist) " metaphysics has no special connexion
with genuine religion." ^

§ 7. How, then, can Absolutism possibly be a religion ?
It must appeal to psychological motives of a different
sort, rare enough to account for its total divergence from
the ordinary religious feelings, and compelling enough
to account for the fanaticism with which it is held and
the persistence with which the same old round of
negations has been reiterated through the ages. Of
such psychological motives we shall indicate the more
important and reputable.

(i) It is decidedly flattering to one's spiritual pride
to feel oneself a ' part ' or ' manifestation ' or ' vehicle ' or
' reproduction ' of ' the Absolute Mind,' and to some this
feeling affords so much strength and comfort and such
exquisite delight that they refrain from inquiring what
these phrases mean, and whether the relation they
indicate would seem equally satisfactory if regarded
conversely from the standpoint of the Absolute Mind.
It is, moreover, chiefly the strength of this feeling which
explains the blindness of absolutists towards the logical
defects of their theory. It keeps them away from
' Plato's Chasm,' the insuperable gap between the human
and the ideal ; ^ for whenever they imagine that they

^ Appearance and Reality"^, p. 454.
^ Cp. Essays ii. and vi.

290 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xn

have ' advanced towards a complete solution ' by ap-
proaching its brink, they find that the glow of feeling is
chilled.

(2) There is a strange delight in wide generalization
merely as such, which when pursued without reference
to the ends which it subserves, and without regard to its
actual functioning, often results in a sort of logical
vertigo. This probably has much to do with the
peculiar ' craving for unity ' which is held to be the
distinctive affliction of philosophers. At any rate, the
thought of an all-embracing One or Whole seems to be
regarded as valuable and elevating, quite apart from any
definite function it performs in knowing, or service it
does, or light it throws on any actual problem.

(3) The thought of an Absolute Unity is cherished as
a guarantee of cosmic stability. In face of the restless
vicissitudes of phenomena it seems to secure us against
falling out of the universe. It assures us a priori — and
that is its supreme value — that the cosmic order cannot
fall to pieces, and leave us dazed and confounded among
the debris of a universe shattered, as it was compounded,
by the mere chance comings and goings of its fortuitous
constituents. We want to have an absolute assurance
of the inherent coherence of the world ; we want to have
an aosolute assurance a priori concerning the future ; and
the thought of the Absolute seems designed to give it.
It is probably this last notion that, consciously or un-
consciously, weighs most in the psychology of the
absolutist creed.

§ 8. Such, if we are not mistaken, are the essential
foundations of the absolutist's faith — the things which he
' believes upon instinct ' and for which he proceeds to
' find bad reasons,' to quote Mr. Bradley's epigram about
(his own ?) metaphysics.^ And we, of course, to whom
human instincts are interesting and precious and sacred,
should naturally incline to respect them, whether or not
we shared them, whether or not the reasonings prompted
by them struck us as logically cogent. We should

^ Appearance and Reality, p. xiv.

xn ABSOLUTISM AND RELIGION 291

respect Absolutism, like any other religion, if we were
allowed to.

Unfortunately, however, Absolutism is absolutism, and
will not let us. It will not tolerate freedom of thought,
and divergence of opinion, and difference of taste. It is
not content to rest on wide-spread feelings which appeal
to many minds : it insists on its universal cogency. All
intelligence as such must give its assent to its scheme ;
and if we will not or cannot, we must either be coerced
or denied intelligence. Differences of opinions and tastes
and ideals are not rationally comprehensible : hence it is
essentially intolerant, and where it can, it persecutes.

We are compelled, therefore, to fight it in self-defence,
and to maintain that its contentions are not logically
cogent. For unless we can repulse its tyrannical pre-
tensions, we lose all we cared for, viz. our liberty to
think our experience in the manner most congenial to
our personal requirements.

§ 9. But in order that we may not imitate its bad
example, let us not contend that because Absolutism
fails of being a rational system cogent for all minds, it
collapses into incoherent self -contradictory nonsense ;
but let us merely, quite mildly, explain why and where
it falls short of perfect rationality to our individual
thinking. For then, even if we succeed in making good
our case, we shall not have attacked the absolutist's
amotir propre^ which is the 'amor intellectualis Dei' \ he
can still escape defeat by the unassailed conviction that
to his mind his case remains unanswerable. And so we
shall both be satisfied ; if only he will recognize a plurality
of types of mind, and consequent thereon, a possibility
of more than one ' rational ' and ' logically cogent ' system
of philosophy.

Armed, then, with the consoling assurance that our
* logical ' criticism is at bottom psychological, and cannot
therefore, in defending our own disputed rationality, hurt
the religious feelings of the absolutist, let us proceed to
declare roundly that the grounds of Absolutism are {to
our minds) logically quite inadequate.

292 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xn

(i) In pragmatic minds the emotional 'craving for
unity ' described in § 7 (2) is not an all-absorbing passion.
It is rationally controlled by calm reflection on its functional
value. Merely to be able to say that the universe is (in some
sense) one, affords them no particular delight. Before they
grow enthusiastic over the unity of the universe, they want
to know a good deal more about it ; they want to know
more precisely what are the consequences of this unity, what
good accrues to anything merely in virtue of its inclusion
in a universe, how a world which is one is superior as
such to a congeries of things which have merely come to
act together. All these matters can doubtless be ex-
plained, only Absolutism has not yet condescended to
do so ; it will be time to welcome it when it has. More-
over, when these questions have been answered, it will be
asked further as to why it feels justified in ascribing its
ideal of unity to our experience, and how it proposes to
distinguish between the two cases of a real and a pseudo-
unity. How, in short, can it be ascertained whether a
world, of which unity can be predicated in some respects,
possesses also, and will evermore continue to manifest, all
the qualities which have been included in our ideal of
unity ?

(2) We shall further be desirous of inquiring what is
the value of the apparent guarantee of cosmic order by
the * systematic unity,' the * self-fulfilling ' coherence of
the Absolute ? What precisely are {a) its benefits, and
{b) the grounds of the guarantee ?

{a) From a human point of view the benefits of the
postulate of cosmic order, though great, are not nearly
enough fully to rationalize existence. And they have
to be paid for. On the one hand, there can be no in-
determinism in the rigid real. Absolutism is absolute
determinism. And there can be no intervention of a
higher power in the established order of nature. That is,
there can be neither ' free ' choice nor * miracle.' Both are
the acme of irrationality from the absolutist's point of
view, and would put him to intellectual confusion. On
the other hand, this sacred ' order ' of the Absolute does

xn ABSOLUTISM AND RELIGION 293

not exclude the most stupendous vicissitudes, the most
appalling catastrophes, in the phenomenal world.

Let us, therefore, take a concrete case, viz. (i) the
total volatilization of the earth and all that creeps upon
it, in consequence of the sun's collision with another star ;
and (2) an opportune miracle which enables those who
will avail themselves of it to escape, say to Mr. H. G.
Wells's 'Utopian double' of our ill-starred planet. Now
it is clear that intellectually (i) would not be a catas-
trophe at all. The established laws of the ' perfect '
universe provide such ' catastrophes ' in regular course.
They happen one or two a year. And we do not mind.
We think them rather pretty, if the ' new stars ' flare up
brilliantly enough, and are gratified to find that the
' reign of law ' obtains also in ' distant parts of the
stellar regions ' ; (2), on the other hand, would be
intellectually a real disaster. An irruption of miracle,
however beneficent, destroys the (conception of a) system
of nature. A consistent absolutist, therefore, would not
hesitate to choose. (He has no freedom of choice any-
how !) He would decline to be saved by a miracle. He
would refuse to be put to intellectual confusion. He
would prefer to die a martyr's death in honour of an
unbroken order of nature.

A Humanist would not be so squeamish. He would
reflect that the conception of an ' order of nature ' was
originally a human device for controlling human experience,
and that if at any time a substitute therefor turned up, he
was free to use it. He would have no ingrained objection
even to a miraculous disorder, provided that it issued in a
sequence of events superior to that which * inexorable
laws ' afforded. And he would marvel that the absolutist
should never, apparently, have thought of the possibility
that his whole martyrdom might be stultified by his
ignorance of what the cosmic order included or excluded ;
so that if he had known more, he might have seen that
the ' miracle ' he had scouted was really part of a higher
and more humanly ' rational ' order, while the collision he
had so loyally accepted was nothing of the kind, but in

294 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xn

truth an ' accident.' And in either case is it not clear
that each man's choice would be determined, not by the
pure rationality of the alternatives and an irresistible logic
of the situation, but by the preferences of his individual
idiosyncrasy ?

(3) {^) We have already often hinted that our
ignorance and the difficulties of identifying our actual
knowledge with the ideal truth, are continually under-
mining the value of rationalistic assumptions and defeat-
ing the aims it sets out to attain. So in this case.
When the a priori guarantee of the coherence and pre-
dictability of the universe by means of the Absolute comes
to be examined, it turns out to be of the flimsiest kind.

It rests on three assumptions — (i) that the order of
nature which we have postulated, and which has, for the last
few hundreds or thousands of years, shown itself (more or
less) conformable to our demand, is really adequate to
our ' ideal ' and will fully realize it. This assumption
manifestly rests in part on non-intellectual considerations,
in part on the dubious procedure of the ontological
proof,^ in part on the assumed correctness of the ' ideal.'
(2) It is assumed that we know {a) the Whole, {U) the
world, and ic) our own minds, well enough to know that
we shall continue to make the same demands and to
find that reality will continue to conform to them. Now
it seems to be distinctly hazardous to affirm that even
the human mind must continue to make even its most
axiomatic demands to all eternity : that even the known
world contains many more surprises for us, seems quite
probable ; while it seems fantastic to claim that we know
the total possibilities of existence well enough to feel
sure that nothing radically new can ever be evolved.
Yet any irruption of novelty from any of these three
sources would be enough to invalidate our present
Absolutism, and to put it to intellectual confusion. It
is false, therefore, to assume (3) that what would now
seem to be ' irrational,' and to put us to ' intellectual
confusion,' may not really be part of a larger design, and

1 Cp. Essay ix. § 12.

xn ABSOLUTISM AND RELIGION 295

possessed of a higher rationality. Hence the rationalist's
protest against irrationalism must always fail, if the latter
chooses to claim a higher (and other) rationality.

Now all these assumptions may be more or less
probable, but it cannot surely be asserted that their
acceptance is obligatory, and that their rejection entails
intellectual suicide. Hence there remains, in Absolutism,
as in all other philosophies, an empirical element of risk
and uncertainty, which ' the Absolute ' only conceals, but
does nothing to eradicate.

(4) Lastly, and perhaps most fundamentally and
cogently, what sense is there in calling the universe a
universe at all ? How, that is, can the notion be applied
at all ? To call our world ' the universe ' is to imply that
it is somehow to be conceived as a whole. But we could
never actually treat it as such. For we could never know
it well enough. It might be of such a kind as not to be
a completed whole, and never to become one, either
because it was not rigid, but unpredictably contained
within itself inexhaustible possibilities of new develop-
ments, or because it was really a mere fragment, subject
to incalculable influxes and influences from without, which,
if reality were truly infinite, might never cease. But
either of these possibilities would suffice entirely to
invalidate reasonings based on the assumed identity of
our world with the universe.^

It is somewhat remarkable that this difficulty should
not, apparently, have been perceived by absolutists, and
it is significant of the emotional character of their whole
faith, that they should habitually delight in the colloca-
tion of ' infinite ' with ' whole,' without suspecting the gross
contradiction this implies. The * infinite ' is that which
cannot be got together into a whole, and the whole is
that which must be complete. But the truth is that, as
used by Absolutism, neither term is used with much
precision. Both are mainly labels for emotions.

It would be possible, but not very instructive, to go
through the whole series of absolutist catchwords, to

1 Cp. p. 333.

296 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xn

expose their vagueness and ambiguity, and to show that
in the end they are all meaningless, because they are all
inapplicable to our actual experience. Inapplicable, that is,
without risk. But if they are once admitted to involve
risks, they are in the first place empirical, and in the
second lacking in complete intellectual cogency. Whoever
wills may decline to take the risks, and by so doing
renounce the absolutist interpretation of experience.
And his procedure may be for him quite as rational as
that of the absolutist. But is not this to have shown that
Absolutism can rationally be rejected ?

§ 10. This conclusion is all we need, and if only it
can be similarly accepted by the absolutist, will constitute
a true eirenicon. This is the last possibility we have to
examine.

Our arguments were satisfactory to us because they
seemed rational to us. We only undertook to show that
we could make out a rational case for ourselves. Of
course, however, in calling them rational we implied a
claim that all similar minds would assent to them. We
did not dogmatize about all minds, because, for all we
can know a priori, there may be minds differently con-
stituted from our own. Only, if there are, they are not
' similar ' minds (for our present purposes). The differ-
ences in functioning and constitution between these minds
and ours are worthy of examination, and may (or may
not) be capable of explanation. But it is at any rate
useless to argue with them. That is all.

But the case looks materially different from the
absolutist's standpoint. He was, ex hypothesi, unable to
combat our case with arguments which seemed rational
to us. But, at the same time, he does not accept the
arguments which seem rational to us. They seem to him
as little ' cogent ' as his do to us. To resolve this dead-
lock, he is offered the suggestion that in some respects
there exist intrinsic differences in the logical texture of
human minds, and that consequently we may, and must,
agree to differ. Thus if he accepts this, he too is secured
against attack, and peace must ensue.

xii ABSOLUTISM AND RELIGION 297

But can the absolutist content himself with this
solution? If he does, will he not debar himself from his
original claim that his theory is absolutely cogent and
valid for intelligence as such ? For was it not part of
his theory that such complete cogency existed, and was
possessed by his arguments ? He cannot therefore com-
promise his claim. He must insist on proving his case
literally to every one of his adversaries, and similarly on
disproving theirs to their own complete (logical) satisfac-
tion, and not merely to his ! It is evident that this
imposes on him a stupendous burden of proof. To fail to
admit the logical cogency of a single step in his argument
is to shake the whole structure to its foundations. To
renounce it, is to refute it. A single dissentient, therefore,
will be, not merely a theoretical impeachment and a
practical nuisance, but actually an unanswerable argument
against the truth of the theory, of which it will be at all
costs necessary to persuade him ! Is it a wonder that
absolutists are irritated by the mildest of protests against
the least of their beliefs ? Their whole view of the
universe is imperilled : they are put to intellectual
confusion, if the objector is not ' somehow ' silenced or
removed.

But have they any one to thank for their dilemma but
themselves ? Why did they devise a theory which, by
its very hostility to individual liberty, by its very insist-
ence on absolute conformity, is finally forced to sanction
the Liberum Veto in philosophy, and thereby to ensure its
own destruction ? It was not prudent. Nor is it a wise
theory which offers such facilities for its own refutation.
The situation might move to compassion the most relent-
less enemy. But we are helpless. The equitable com-
promise we offered has been rejected. Absolutism has
foisted upon us the Liberum Veto, and forced us to
exercise it. It has thrust the sword into our hands upon
which it proceeds to fall. And we, after all, shall not
be inconsolably afflicted. It saves much argument when
one's opponent commits the happy dispatch.

XIII
THE PAPYRI OF PHILONOUS

I. PROTAGORAS THE HUMANIST. H. A DIALOGUE
CONCERNING GODS AND PRIESTS

The manuscripts from which the two following papers have
been translated were found ' in a battered leaden casket
among the ruins of the temple of Dionysus at Mende on
the Thracian coast,' and conclude with a statement that
they were records of conversations held with Antimorus,
the wisest of priests, in the month before he died, written
down by Philonous, the son of Antinous, and by him
dedicated to the god, before he set out to war with the
Olynthians.

To us their value is threefold. If they are authentic,
and their portrait of Protagoras is quite as likely to be
authentic as Plato's of Socrates, they may, in the first
place, supply an intelligible and much-needed context to
the bare dicta about the gods and Man the Measure, to
which the thought of that great thinker has practically
been reduced for us, and show that the true significance
of Protagorean theology was not agnosticism any more
than the true significance of Protagorean epistemology
was scepticism. And though they cannot undo the
irreparably fatal work of Athenian bigotry in collecting
and publicly burning Protagoras's book on Truth, they
may at least lead us to hesitate before condemning
him on the evidence of two short sentences.

They may serve, in the second place, as a wholesome
corrective of Plato's brilliant but partisan picture of Greek

298

xm THE PAPYRI OF PHILONOUS 299

philosophic activity at the close of the fifth century B.C.
And especially they may vindicate the memory of Prota-
goras.

The greatness of Protagoras was indeed sufficiently
evident to the discerning eye even before this discovery.
For Plato's own account of him to some extent supplied
its own corrective. In the Protagoras he seems as clearly
to excel Socrates in nobility of moral sentiment as he
falls short of him in dialectical quibbling. In this
dialogue it is Protagoras who is the moralist, and
Socrates who is the * sophist' In the Theaetetus Plato,
while still expressing his respect for the moral character
of Protagoras, makes a desperate attempt to convict his
Humanist theory of knowledge of scepticism and sensa-
tionalism. But he clearly shows that he has not under-
stood the doctrine he criticizes,^ and, but for the magic of
his writing, no one would be beguiled into supposing that
the charming digressions and the irrelevant by -play
about timid boys and Thracian handmaids which follow
(168-179) on the candid and powerful defence of Prota-
goras in 166-8, contain any answer to the essential
points, to wit, the contention that the dialectical para-
doxes, v/hich the recognition of truth-making by indi-
vidual men may seem to involve, vanish so soon as
it is observed that such ' truths ' are claims, that claims
to truth vary in value, and that the ' wise ' man is he whose
claims are valuable, and so are accepted as valid. Plato
manifestly evades this issue of the validation of claims ;
he reverts instead to the old abstraction which treats it
as irrelevant to truth who makes a claim (171), and is
content to show that a chaos of opinions must result.
The fallacy is the same as that of the Shah of Persia,
mentioned by James,^ who refused to go to the Derby on
the ground that he already knew that one horse could run
faster than another. Similarly, if different individuals put
forward different valuations, and we refuse to evaluate these
claims, ' the ' opinion on any subject must remain a chaos,
and every * truth ' will be judged to be both ' true ' and

^ See also Essays ii. § 5, iii. § 17, and v. §1. ^ princ. of Psych, ii. 675.

300 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xm

' false.' But not by the same people, and not so as to
render the right to put forward individual claims (which
is all that the Protagorean maxim amounts to) intrinsically
contradictory. It is mere ignoratio elenchi, therefore, to
treat Plato's argument as a refutation of Protagoras or as
an answer to his proposal to evaluate the conflicting
claims. After this Plato passes off into a magnificently
eloquent description of the philosophic character, which
ever since has served as an apologia for the futilities of
countless pedants. And finally (179 b), having taken
his readers off the scent by these digressions, he triumph-
antly proves that one man is wiser than another, and
that therefore not every one is ' the measure ' ; as if ' wiser '
were identical with ' truer,' instead of being an equivoca-
tion between it and ' better,' and as if he had not himself
attributed to Protagoras a distinction between the claim
to truth, which any one can make, and its validation,
which is achieved only by the * wise.' In short, he merely
reiterates the objection which his own ' Protagoras ' had
refuted.^

In the third place, we may gather from these MSS.
how men of high spirituality and great acuteness of mind,
but nurtured in a religious creed absurd and outworn
beyond anything we can easily imagine, might confront
the uncertainties of human fate. And it is curiously
instructive to note how very modern, in spite of the
immense progress which both science and religion have
made, the Protagorean attitude towards theology still
sounds to us.

The reason probably is that human nature has
changed but little. Man himself is still the greatest
obstacle in the way of man's knowledge of what it most
concerns man to know. His indolence and his fears still
prompt him to declare impious and forbidden, or impos-

^ It is not, however, by any means so certain that Protagoras regarded all
views as equally ' true,' as that he regarded some as ' better ' than others.
Plato's way of extracting this admission [Tkeaet. 152 c) rather suggests that it
may be only a bit of intellectualist misunderstanding, and it is quite possible that
Protagoras already distinguished between a 'claim' and a 'truth,' and only
attributed to individual judgments the value of ' claims.'

xm THE PAPYRI OF PHILONOUS 301

sible, the knowledge which would transform his cosmic
outlook. He still prefers to conceive religion conser-
vatively rather than progressively. He still keeps the
treasures of divine revelation hidden away in his sanc-
tuaries, for fear lest the attempt to make use of them
should lead to their loss, and not to their augmentation.
There is a most instructive contrast between the hypocrisy
of science and of religion ; that of the former, while pro-
fessing abject obedience to nature, has stealthily mastered
it ; '■ that of the latter, while claiming to commune with
the supernatural, has secretly shrunk away from it ; and
so the faith which in the one case expands into know-
ledge, in the other shrivels into make-believe.^

1 Natura non nisi parendo vincitui-. Bacon could humorously write, with a
pen on paper and in a study, man had made by moulding reality to his pur-
poses. But to keep on repeating this as a reply to Humanism is not humorous,
but stupid.

2 Cp. Essay .\vi. §§ 9, 10.

XIV
PROTAGORAS THE HUMANIST

Antimorus j of Mende, a small Greek city in Chalcidice, devoted
PhilonoUS ( to the production and consumption of wine.

Protagoras, of Abdera.
MOROSOPHUS, an Eleatic philosopher.
SOPHOMORUS, his son.

Time — About 370 B,c. Place — Before the temple of Dionysus at Mende.

ARGUMENT

Philonous consults Antimorus about his project of studying philosophy
under Plato, and is warned by him that Plato's accounts of Athenian
philosophy cannot be trusted. For example, he had wholly mis-
represented Protagoras. In proof whereof Antimorus reads out his
notes concerning a discussion by Protagoras and two Eleatics of the
dictum that Man is the Measure of all things. Philonous professes him-
self to be converted, but his enthusiasm is restrained by Antimorus.

Antimorus. Desire of what, Philonous, has driven
you now first to visit me ?

Philonous. I hope you will pardon my boldness,
Antimorus, in venturing to visit uninvited one who I
hardly thought would have known me.

A. It is always an honour for an old man to be visited
by the young and fair ; and, fortunately, I was able to
recognize you at once. You are like your mother, and
singularly like your grandmother.

P. Was not my grandmother very beautiful ?

A. So beautiful that when I was your age, Philonous,
I should have preferred Eudora to any other gift of the
gods. But her father esteemed Philoenus the better
match. You are welcome, therefore — not only on your
own account.

302

XIV PROTAGORAS THE HUMANIST 303

P. How strange !

A. And you are the more welcome, and by far more
wonderful, Philonous, in that you have come to me instead
of looking on at the show. For I fancy that you and I
alone of the Mendeans will this day be absent from the
theatre. Surely it is not a slight matter that has brought
you ?

P, It is one so great that I came with trepidation,
and even now hardly know how to put it.

A. Tell me. Are you in love?

P. Yes, but very strangely.

A. How ? With a Lamia ?

P. I am in love with Wisdom, and deem that you of
all men here can best tell me how to obtain her.

A. Unhappy boy. Wisdom is worse than any Lamia,
excelling them all in the perplexing shapes she takes,
and in the enchantments whereby she lures her victims to
destruction !

P. But is it not true, Antimorus, that in your youth
you, too, were zealous to pursue Wisdom, and shrinking
from no danger, journeyed far, even to Athens, and listened
to the converse of the great sages of antiquity ?

A. To Athens, aye, and farther. You will not easily
find another, either in Hellas or among the barbarians,
who has asked the Sphinx her riddles and questioned also
the priests of the Egyptians, and Judeans, and Hyper-
boreans, the Magians, and the Gymnosophists.

P. How wonderful ! How much wisdom you must
have learnt !

A. A bitter wisdom, to be ignorant of which you
might well prefer to much money !

P. Will you not tell me what it was ? For money
seems to me as nothing in comparison with wisdom.

A. First, that priests are priests throughout the world,
however different the gods they serve. Next, that the
god whom sophists serve is everywhere the same. Next,
that wisdom is as hard to find in a barbarian land and in
unintelligible speech as in the familiar commonplaces of
our tongue and country. Next, that folly is everywhere at

304 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xiv

home, and densest in the densest crowd. Next, that to
war with folly is the luxury of gods, and that for mortals
it is enough to make a living. For as the poet says —

With folly even gods contend in vain.

P. A bitter wisdom, truly ! And not acceptable to
one who is aiming at being sent at the public expense to
study the wisdom of Athens.

A. Ah, you wish to do as the scholars from Rhodes !
But be not discouraged, and learn rather how many times
the greater includes the less. When you have learnt the
folly of Athens you will be glad to return to Mende.

P. And is this the reason why you have returned to
us, and are content to live here in seclusion, instead of
becoming, as was hoped, the most famous of the teachers
of Hellas ?

A. That, and sheer weariness. But if I had not
returned ill and with great difficulty, from vainly searching
the icy Caucasus for the most glorious victim of divine
malignity, Prometheus, I should hardly have taken to piety
and drink by accepting this priesthood of Dionysus, nor
would you now every year admire the skill with which I
exhort the Mendeans at the great festival to get merry in
honour of the god. Not that they need the exhortation ;
but my speeches are considered most stimulating and
pleasing to gods and men I However, there are compen-
sations, and the old wine in the temple cellars is really
excellent.

P. So I have heard.

A. You shall celebrate with me your election to a
studentship at Athens !

P. I thank you. But just now I would rather hear
about the sages you have met. Were none of them truly
great and wise ?

A. One there was upon whose like the sun will not
shine again for ten thousand years.

P, And that, I suppose, was Socrates ?

A. What ! The boon companion of all the dissolute
young swells in Athens 1 I knew him well, as well as I

XIV PROTAGORAS THE HUMANIST 305

wanted to. At times, and for a little while, he was not
unamusing. It was as stupid as it was cruel to make
him drink the hemlock. But he had angered the
Athenians beyond endurance, and when fools get angry
they are as likely to commit a crime as a blunder. No
one, however, who knew him, and wished to speak the
truth, would speak of him as I have spoken of the wisest
of men from the foolishest of cities, Protagoras from
Abdera !

P. It is true, then, that you were his companion ?

A. Only for a little while, alas ! For in the fifth year
of my intercourse with him the Athenians condemned
him for impiety — because he had both spoken and written
♦ the Truth ! '

P. Yes, I have heard. He preached atheism, did he
not, and said " concerning the gods I have never been
able to discover whether they exist or not : life is too
short and the subject too obscure " ?

A. That is how they slandered him ! For of all the
men that ever lived Protagoras was the most anxious to
know about the gods. Whereas the many have no wish
to know ; it is enough for them to believe what they
have heard. And of the gods they will believe anything,
whether it be holy or unholy, provided that it makes a
pleasing tale. What alone they will not endure is that
any one should tJiink about divine things, or do what he
believes the gods desire rather than what they desire. Now
Protagoras wanted to know and tried to find out. But
he was not allowed. For in every city they told him
other tales about the gods, and when he compared their
several versions they said that he was impious ! And so,
taking one sentence out of many, they condemned him
unjustly, in word indeed because of his impiety, but in
fact because he had refused to give Hypocrites the
Sycophant a talent wherewith to celebrate the shameful
mysteries of Cotillon.^

P. And did the Athenians give him poison too ?

1 So the MS. , but we should no doubt read Cotytto (an unsavoury Thraciau

goddess popular in Athens).

3o6 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xiv

A. No, that they keep for their own citizens. Nor
did my master stay to be condemned. But they drove
him out, and forced him to flee for refuge to Sicily. The
ship was unseaworthy, and he never arrived.

P. The Athenians seem to attract wise men only to
destroy them ! I marvel that men call their city the
Lamp of Hellas !

A. Not unreasonably. Does not the lamp attract
moths and destroy them ?

P. It would seem then, Antimorus, that you think
very differently concerning Protagoras from Plato, who has
mentioned him in several dialogues, and indeed you also
once.^ Did you know Plato ? and have you read
him ? They say that no one now at Athens will listen
to any philosophy but his.

A. If that be true, I would counsel him to change
his philosophy frequently ! For the Athenians are ever
eager for something that sounds new. They are always
demanding new truth, lest they should be asked to put
some old truth into practice. As for Aristocles the son
of Ariston, whom you call by his nickname, he was but a
lad when we left Athens, promising indeed and full of
poetry, but not as yet taking part in philosophical
discussion.

P. But do you not think his writings wonder-
ful ?

A. He is a poet still. But if he had not become
imbued with the belief that virtue is knowledge, and that
knowledge is concerned about the eternal and super-
human, he might have done more than most to render
virtue beautiful and knowledge profitable in the eyes of
men.

P. And what do you think of his portrait of Pro-
tagoras ? You know that he has named a dialogue after
him ?

A. Very little. You must not believe a word he says.

P. Is his account untrue then ?

A. Pure and malicious fiction.

1 Protagoras, 315 A, where our MSS. read ' AvTiixoipos instead of ' AvTifiiiipos.

XIV PROTAGORAS THE HUMANIST 307

P. What ! the whole story of the encounter of Socrates
and Protagoras?

A. Certainly. You can easily see for yourself that
there is not a word of truth in it.

P. You astonish me !

A. You will be still more astonished to learn that the
Callias, at whose house the conversation is said to have
taken place, did not succeed to the fortune of the
Daduchs until his father Hipponicus had fallen in the
battle of Delium about the eighty-eighth Olympiad.^ And
by this time Pericles the son of Xanthippus must have
been dead more than five years, having lost his sons by the
plague. And yet both his sons are said by Plato to have
been present ! And, moreover, the incipient beard of
Alcibiades, mentioned in the beginning, which Socrates
in his infatuation professes to admire, must have been
sprouting for at least ten years upon a man who had
already campaigned both at Delium and at Potidaea.
Nor w^ould you easily gather from Plato's story that
Socrates was only about ten years younger than Prota-
goras. If, therefore, Plato blunders so grossly about
simple facts which he might easily have ascertained, how
can you trust him to report correctly the subtleties of a
philosophical debate ?

P. What you tell me, Antimorus, is as distressing as
it is astonishing. For if the writings of Plato are not to
be believed, what shall I be able to fancy that I know
either about Socrates or about Protagoras or any of the
old philosophers ?

A. Was it not well said by Bias that " to know we
know not is the beginning of knowledge " ? And are there
not those yet alive who can tell you the truth both
about the " Truth " of Protagoras and the " ignorance " of
Socrates ?

P. I would beseech you, Antimorus, to enlighten mine
before you expound that of Socrates. For at present I
have no longer any reason to believe anything, not even
that Protagoras declared that Jllan is the measure of all

^ 424 B.C.

3o8 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xiv

things^ but shall have to suspect this too to be a wicked
figment of Plato's, until you have given me the true
measure of the man.

A. Because you have had the good fortune to be born
the grandson of Eudora, and the boldness to search for
truth in this old wine-jar, there shall be revealed to you
what no one yet has grasped, the meaning of Protagoras !

P. Is that a still greater mystery ? And was I
wrong in thinking Plato's exposition had made this clear
to me ?

A, Which of them ? That in which he makes Prota-
goras mean that one man is as good a measure as
another,^ or that in which he admits that Protagoras
might justly prefer the judgment of the wise ? ^ that in
which the dictum is said to mean that knowledge is
sensation,^ or that in which it is too contradictory to
mean anything at all ? ^

P. I have always understood these accounts to mean
the same.

A. You are young, Philonous, and Aristocles has grown
into a great dialectician. But the " Truth " of Protagoras
he has neither understood nor tried to understand. Like
all these dialecticians, he has attacked that in Protagoras
which is in truth the merest truism ; that which is truly
important he has not grasped, while of that which is truly
daring but delightful, novel but hazardous, he has never
had a glimmering. Perhaps, however, you can tell me
how you have understood all Plato's accounts to mean the
same.

P. I feel more reluctance, Antimorus, and more doubt
in arguing with you than ever before since I have con-
cerned myself with philosophy. For though it all seemed
difficult of access to the vulgar and full of subtlety, it yet
seemed certain and to be grasped by pure intelligence.
Whereas now it seems to me that you not only question
all that has been received as true, but also that you are
able to prove it false if in any respect it is untrue. And

1 Theaetetus, 162 C. ^ Ibid. 166 D.

3 Ibid. 160 D. ■* Ibid. 171 c.

XIV PROTAGORAS THE HUMANIST 309

so I begin to doubt even whether I correctly remember
what Plato argued, and whether I have fully understood it.

A. You are young, Philonous, else you would never
be ashamed to recite whatever has been received as true.
When you are older you will fear to do anything
else. Be of good cheer, therefore, and tell me the
tradition.

P. Is it not possible (i) to take Protagoras to mean
each individual man ? And (2) was not his preference for
a wise man as the measure the pleasing inconsistency of
a surrender to fact? As for the inference (3) that know-
ledge is sensation, must not that be drawn from the
assertion that what appears, is, to each? For is not
sensation " what appears " ? And, lastly (4), is it not
clear that if what appears to each is true, and if things
appear differently to different men, everything both is
and is not at the same time ? And so is not everything in
contradiction with itself, and knowledge quite destroyed ?
And is it not the best of the joke that in destroying his
own argument Protagoras has escaped his own notice ?
For what he maintains appears true to him, but not to
the rest ! And so is not what they say is truth by so
much ' truer ' than what he says it is as they are more
numerous than he ?

A. And so you are quite satisfied that Protagoras
meant what Aristocles has said he meant ?

P. To speak frankly, I have sometimes wondered, and
the more so now that you question me, whether he really
meant the individual man to be the universal measure.
It seems so much simpler and more sensible to have
meant mankind by " man," and I suspect that this is how
you will defend Protagoras.

A. Protagoras needs not defence as yet so much as
you. Did you not observe that even Aristocles makes
Protagoras affirm that the wise man's judgment may be
far better than that of the rest ?

P. I now remember a distinction I did not then think
much of But even so, would this make the wise man's
judgment truer}

310 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xiv

A. Perhaps not, if you imagine the "true" to have
no relation to the "good." If by "true" you mean what
merely is, the opinions held by the veriest fool or madman
may seem just as " true," just as much " facts," as those of
Protagoras himself. And yet the latter will far surpass
them in value. But perhaps you may some day be
persuaded that you do not understand the " true "
aright until you have seen that it is embraced in the
" good," and that therefore the " better " is also the
" truer."

P. I do not quite understand. Will you not explain ?

A. When you have completed your defence ! Did
you not observe, secondly, that when Protagoras made man
the measure, he did not mean any part of him, his smell
or his sight, his palm or his foot, but the whole man,
with all his powers ?

P. How stupid of me not to have noticed this !

A. You would not now say, then, that man's life was
wholly sensation ?

P. Of course not. We reason also, and purpose, and
desire.

A. Was it fair then to make Protagoras mean that
knowledge is sensation ?

P. I suppose not.

A. You are convicted then, Philonous, of doing an
injustice to Protagoras.

P. I must confess it, and ask you to pardon me, on
his behalf!

A. Again, why should you say that it is contradictory
for the same to appear different in different relations or
to different persons ? Is it contradictory that I, for in-
stance, should appear large to you here, but small from
the top of Mount Athos, or large to a mouse and small
to an elephant ? And have you never in winter tried to
mix warm water with cold, and after putting one hand in
the one and the other in the other, found that the same
mixture appeared warm to the hand which had been in
the cold water, and cold to that which had been in the
warm ?

XIV PROTAGORAS THE HUMANIST 311

P. No, I have not tried, but I have no difficulty in
perceiving all this.

A. Why then should it be absurd that different people
should think differently about the same subjects ? If it
is customary among the Thracians never to speak to their
mothers-in-law, and among the Hellenes to speak to them
with honied words, shall we say that the notion of mother-
in-law is that of something which both is and is not to be
spoken to, and are mothers-in-law on this account con-
tradictory and impossible ?

P. Perhaps not, and yet I well remember my father
Antinous saying that his mother-in-law, my grandmother
Eudora, was both contradictory and an impossible woman.

A. Why then should Aristocles regard it as absurd
that each should judge in his own way concerning what
he perceives, and that nevertheless one man's judgment
should be ten thousand times as good as another's ?

P. I would no longer call it absurd. But though what
you say seems reasonable, can you tell me how it comes
about that we all perceive the same things, and live in a
world which is common to us all ? And how, if you
admit this, does it follow from the saying of Protagoras ?

A. I see, Philonous, that you have not yet thought
deeply enough to ask what we mean by a " common "
perception. If you had, you would be ripe to understand,
not only Protagoras, but also far better the " common "
world we live in.

P. We seem to have come to the brink of a great
thought.

A. Aye, and one which Aristocles has never reached.

The question you have asked is one which Protagoras
alone has raised, and to which he alone gives the answer.
And so, as a reward, you shall hear an argument between
the Master and two philosophers of Elea. I was myself
present, and my record is correcter by far than anything
Aristocles has said either about him or about Socrates.
Let us go within to get it, and to refresh ourselves with
some of my most sacred wine.

312 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xiv

You have heard of Parmenides, of course, Philonous ?

P. The most wonderful of philosophers !

A. The boldest, certainly, in wandering farthest from
the truth into the formless void; Then you may have
heard, too, of his son, Morosophus ?

P. Not until now. Was he too a philosopher ?

A. He preferred to be, rather than to be thought,
one.

P. That, I suppose, is why I have never heard of him.

A. Then you are probably ignorant, too, of his son
Sophomorus ?

P. Entirely. What prevented him from becoming
famous ?

A. He said it was all one, and did not care.

P. But concerning what did they discourse with
Protagoras ?

A. It was on the day after Protagoras had shown us
how Man is the maker of Truth, and how Truth is the
useful and good, and, in short, that whereby Man lives.
All this he spoke of wondrously, telling us also a sacred
story of the Babylonian priests concerning a garden in
which Man was to live gloriously and happily for ever,
if he would but eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge
which is the Tree of Life, and how by reason of the hard-
ships of climbing the tree, and its thorns, and the rough-
ness of its bark, Man would not, and was driven out by
God, and has lived miserably ever since, a life dull, brutish,
short, and utterly unlike that for which the goodness of
God had destined him. And all were glad to listen,
save only Sophomorus, who had been brought up to
contend with words alone, and cared not for realities. So
the next day, bringing with him his father Morosophus, a
man of sad appearance and with bushy eyebrows, they
attacked Protagoras with verbal puzzles they had ex-
cogitated overnight.

P. I should love to hear their discourse !

A. You shall {reads) : —

" Sophomorus. Behold, Protagoras, my father, Moro-
sophus, to whom I related last night your discourse

XIV PROTAGORAS THE HUMANIST 313

concerning the usefulness of truth. He is quite as wise
as his father, Parmenides, though not so famous, because
he is too proud to contend with sophists such as you.

Protagoras. Then I am honoured indeed that he
should now deign to converse with me !

6". Oh, as to that you need not be too conceited !
I had great difficulty in persuading him to come. Only
he has thought out some arguments which are invincible,
and I want to see you overthrown.

P. I am glad you have come, Morosophus, for what-
ever reason. Shall I begin to state my case, or will you
begin the attack in force ?

Morosophus. I have not come, Protagoras, to argue
with you. It is as unworthy of the one and only true
philosophy to contend against upstart follies such as yours,
as it is of masters to contend with their revolted slaves.
And so, far from attacking you with an array of arguments,
I am minded rather, like the Scythians in the story of
Herodotus, to chastise you with whips, to repress you with
the sort of discipline my father used to inflict upon the
fools who thought that the Many were.

P. You promise great things, oh Morosophus ! May
I take it that as in the Scythians' case you mention,
the attack with the more usual weapons of honourable
warfare has been beaten off? And will it surprise you to
find that a free spirit which was never childish enough
to be enslaved to your ancestral philosophy is not likely
to be slavish enough to be terrified by your ' whips ' ?

S. You soon will be !

P. Bring out your whips then and try !

S. Go in and smash him, father !

M. You asserted, did you not, that the true was
useful ?

P. Assuredly.

M. Is that assertion true ?

P. I hope so.

M. Then do you not see, most foolish one, that you
have failed in your endeavour to reduce truth to useful-
ness ? Have you not admitted that here is a truth of

314 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xiv

which your doctrine does not hold ? Will you not bare
your back to this whip and flee ?

P. You are as kind as you are clever, Morosophus,
but with your leave I should prefer to face your ' whip.'
I do not admit that what you say impairs my argument.
For that the true is useful is not only true^ but, as being
true, is also useful, and judged to be ' true ' because it is
useful. It confirms, therefore, instead of refuting, my first
assertion.

M. And yet, Protagoras, you would have to admit
that it was true that it tvas useful that it ivas true that
the true is useful.

P. And likewise you, that it was useful that it was
true that it was useful that it was true that the true is
useful. Clearly, however often you choose to predicate
truth, I can predicate usefulness, if the true be useful. I
do not see what you gain by making me repeat that any
' truth ' you can name will be admitted only if it can be
shown to be also useful. So the magic by which you
turn the one into the infinite is vain.

M. What I gain is to compel you to pursue the
Infinite.

P. Only if my patience is infinite. But even if
it were, what do you gain ?

M. An argument which pursues the infinite is vain,
and therefore false. Or do you not know that the
Infinite is bad ?

P. It seems to be both bad and good in your
opinion. At least I seem to remember your father (or
was it his follower Melissus ?) arguing that the Whole
was infinite, and also good.

M. That was the good Infinite.

P. How then do you distinguish them ? Nay, how
can you, if, as you say, all things are one ? For if
you distinguish two infinites, are they not two ? But
whether you have one infinite, or two, or twenty, they do
not help you here. For all I have asserted is that of
every truth I will display the use. This you do not
refute by repeating that every truth is also ' true.' For

XIV PROTAGORAS THE HUMANIST 315

this I have never denied. Moreover you yourself seem to
think your view of truth useful — for refuting me !

S. Try another whip upon him, father !

M. Is it possible, Protagoras, that you deny that the
One alone is?

P. Concerning the One I cannot say whether it is
or is not. It is one of many things for which life is
too short and philosophy too long. All I can say is
that I have never yet met the One, and that it is nowhere
visible to the naked eye of unbesotted reason.

M. It is to be seen only with the eye of Intelligence.
Perhaps it is in this that you are lacking.

P. Perhaps this lack is the reverse of loss. The
Many are enough for me, and sometimes more than
enough.

M. Without the One there is no Many.

P. So you have said before, and your father before
you. But can you never explain how ?

M. Without the One, you could not perceive the
world. Nor could you and I perceive the same
world.

P. I am not so sure that we do, quite.

M. What, will you destroy the world with the
* Measure ' of your folly ?

P. I hoped rather to discover how we set out to
build up a world.

M. That is impossible. If each man is the measure,
there can be no common measure, no common world, and
no universal truth.

P. Pardon me if I hold that there can be as much
(and more) of all these things as we in fact possess, and
that, if you listen, I can show you how.

M. It is sad that you should talk such nonsense,
and sadder that I should have to listen.

P. You have provoked me, but I will be merciful,
and, therefore, brief. And, first, let me ask you whether
you admit that we each perceive things in our own
peculiar way ?

M. How can I admit the impossible and that which

3i6 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xiv

is contrary to reason ? I admit only that it is what you
ought to mean, if you wished to be consistent.

P. I am consistent, and more concerned to find out
what truly is, before I consider whether it is contrary
to reason. And it does not seem to me folly to say
that whatever is, is not impossible. Now that we each
perceive things in our own way is what I must infer from
all the evidence. For is this not why we differ in our
tastes and opinions and acts ? And so since what we
experience is different, we reasonably act differently.

M. How would you prove that we perceive differently ?
And how would you discover that in some things we are
different, unless in others we were the same ?

P. True, Morosophus, you state the reason why
I always first of all assume that you agree with me
and perceive as I do, until I find out that you do not.
But this seems to me a reason, not for getting angry or
for inventing a One which is no explanation, but for
inquiring into what is really important, namely, how we
come to be alike in some things and to remain different in
others, and what therefore is meant by ' perceiving the
same.' For either if we all perceived all things alike, or
if we all perceived all things differently, there would be no
difficulty. In the one case we would not get sufficiently
apart to quarrel, in the other we could not get sufficiently
together, and each could dream as it were his own life-
dream without hindrance from any one besides. But as
it is, does it not seem to you a mixed world, compounded
wondrously, of good and evil, reason and unreason, agree-
ments and disagreements? As to your other question,
did you ever meet Xanthias, the son of Glaucus ?

M. Yes, but he seemed to me a very ordinary man
and quite unfit to aid in such inquiries.

P. To me he seemed most wonderful, and a great
proof of the truth I have maintained. For the wretch
was actually unable to distinguish red from green, the
colour of the grass from that of blood ! You may
imagine how he dressed, and how his taste was derided.
But it was his eye, and not his taste, that was in fault. I

XIV PROTAGORAS THE HUMANIST 317

questioned him closely and am sure he could not help it.
He simply saw colours differently. How and why I was
not able to make out. But it was from his case and
others like it, but less startling, that I learnt that truth
and reality are to each man what appears to him.
For the differences, I am sure, exist, even though they
are not noticed unless they are very great and in-
convenient.

M. But surely Xanthias was diseased, and his judg-
ments about colour are of no more importance than- those
of a madman.

P. You do not get rid of the difference by calling it
madness and disease. And how would you define the
essential nature of madness and disease ?

M. I am sure I do not know. You should ask
Asclepius.

P. Ah, he is one of those gods I have never been
able to meet ! Let me hazard, rather, a conjecture that
madness and disease are merely two ways of showing
inability to keep up that common world in which we both
are and are not, and from which we seem to drop out
wholly when we die.^

M. A strange conjecture truly for a strange case !
Would you apply it also to disease? For in that case
the difficulty seems to be rather in conforming oneself to
things than to one's fellow-men.

P, To both, rather. Does not a fever drive one
madly out of the common world into a world of empty
dreams ? And is not the diseased body part of the
common world ?

M. Perhaps, but such conjectures do not interest
me. Will you not rather give an account of your own
disease or madness, that of thinking that the common
world can be compounded out of a multitude of individual
worlds ?

P. Willingly. Conceive then first of all a varied
multitude, each of whom perceived things in a fashion
peculiar to himself

^ Cp. Humanism, s.f. ed. i, pp. 285-7; ed. 2, pp. 370-2.

3i8 STUDIES IxN HUMANISM xiv

M. You bid me conceive a world of madmen !

P. It does not matter what you call them, nor that
our world was never in so grievous a condition. I only
want you to see that such ' madmen ' would in ^no wise
be able to agree or act together, and that each would live
shut up in himself, unintelligible to the others and with
no comprehension of them.

M. Of course.

P. Would you admit also that such a life would be
one of the extremest weakness ?

M. So weak as to be impossible !

P. Perhaps. And now suppose that by the inter-
position of some god, or as the saying is, ' by a divine
chance,' some of these strange beings were to be endowed
with the ability to agree and act together in some partial
ways, say in respect to the red and the sweet, and the
loud and the pleasant. Would this not be a great
advantage ? And would they not be enabled to join
together and to form a community in virtue of the
communion they had achieved ? And would they not
be stronger by far than those who did not ' perceive the
same ' ? And so would they not profit in proportion as
they could ' perceive the same ' ? and would not a world
of ' common ' perception and thought thus gradually grow

M. Only if they really did perceive the same : to
* agree in action ' and to ' perceive the same ' are not the
same, and when you have reached the former you have
not proved the latter.

P. As much as I need to. For by ' perceiving
the same ' I mean only perceiving in such a way that
we can act together. Thus if we are told that a red light
means ' danger ' and a green light ' assistance,' then if we
both flee from the red and welcome the green, we are said
to * perceive the same.' But whether what I perceive as
red is in any other sense ' the same ' as what you perceive
as red, it is foolish even to inquire. For I cannot carry
my ' red ' into your soul nor you yours into mine, and so
we cannot compare them, nor see how far they are alike or

XIV PROTAGORAS THE HUMANIST 319

not. And even if I could, my comparing of my ' red ' with
yours would not be the same as your comparing them.
Moreover, if we imagined, what to me indeed is absurd
but to you should be possible, namely, that when I per-
ceive ' red ' I feel as you do when you perceive ' green,'
and that your feeling when you perceive ' red ' is the same
as mine when I perceive ' green,' there would be no way
of showing that we did not perceive alike.^ For we should
always agree in distinguishing ' red ' and * green.' The
' sameness,' therefore, is not the cause of the common
action, but its effect. Or rather it is another way, less
exact, but shorter, of asserting it. And so there arises
the opinion that we all perceive alike, and that if any one
does not, he is mad. Now this is true as opinion, being as
it is convenient and salutary, and enough for ordinary life.
But for the purposes of sciettce we must be more precise,
and regard ' perception of the same ' not as a starting-
point, but as a goal, which in some matters we have
almost, and for some purposes we have quite reached.
In short, we always at bottom reason from the * common '
action to the ' common ' perception, and not conversely.
Hence, too, when we wish to speak exactly, we must infer
that no two ever quite * perceive the same,' because their
actions never quite agree. Moreover, this makes clear
why we agree about some things and judge the same,
and not about others, but judge differently. We agree
about the things it is necessary to agree about in order to
live at all ; we vary concerning the things which are not
needed for bare life, even though they may conduce to a
life that is beautiful and good. But it is only when we
do not act at all that we are able to live our own private
life apart, and to differ utterly from all others.

M. And what, pray, is this strange life in which we
do not act ?

P, Do you not remember the saying of HeracHtus,
" For the waking there is one common world, but of those
asleep each one turns aside to his own privacy " .? And
do you suppose that if we acted on our dreams, we could

■■ Cp. Poincare, La Valeur de la Sci€?ice, pp. 262-3.

320 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xiv

with impunity do what we dream ? Is it not merely
because we lie still, and do not stir, that we can indulge
our fancies ?

M. All this might be true, and persuasive to one
less fixed in the true opinion than myself, Protagoras, were
it not that all along you have assumed that there is
one common world which all are bound to imitate within
them. It is only if they agree about this that they can
live, and live together, as you say.

P. I am not astonished that you should think,
Morosophus, that such was my assumption. But though
I spoke without precision, I can extend my way of
conceiving the growth, or the making, of a world also
to existences very different from men. The elements,
too, may have joined together in a world, because they
grew into the habit of taking notice of each other,
and prospered by so doing. And so the world may
be a city, and ruled by laws which are the customs
of its citizens. Only you must remember that habits
endure and form the ' nature ' which we find. And so it
seems to us that we come into a world already made and
incapable of change. But this is not the truth. We
' find ' a world made for us, because we are the heirs of
bygone ages, profiting by their work, and it may be suffer-
ing for their folly. But we can in part remake it, and
reform a world that has slowly formed itself. But of all
this how could we get an inkling if we had not begun
by perceiving that of all things, Man, each man, is the
measure ?

M. It seems to me, Protagoras, that you have now
made him, not only the measure, but also the maker.
And this shows that your first dictum was not the greatest
absurdity that Man has ever made.

P. Even this, that Man is a maker of his world, has
a sense in which it is not absurd !

M. Can you not see, man, that Reality is not made
by you, but pre-exists your efforts, immutable, sublime,
and unconcerned, not to be fully grasped by man, even
when he discovers it? Do you not feel the reverential

XIV PROTAGORAS THE HUMANIST 321

awe which hedges round, as you approach it, the One, the
Whole, which is and was and will be ?

P. Frankly, I do not, and it is your feeling which
seems to me absurd. For if the Real were really in-
accessible to man, he could in no wise discover it. And
if the mystery really were sacred, it would be impious
even to desire its disclosure. And so I will not believe
that the Real is unknowable or immutable, or pre-existent
in the way you assume. The Real I deal with is a
real which I acknowledge, and I know, because my action
alters it. And what alone seems funny and absurd to
me is that whenever we have made it different, and more
to our liking, we should say that it was all along what we
have with endless difficulty persuaded it to become. But
surely this trick of ours does not really make it pre-
existent absolutely, nor independent of our action. For
though our actions mostly start from something which we
take as pre-existent, it did not pre-exist as that which it
was altered into. And so that which becomes real by our
efforts is ever said to be more real than that which we
started from, and altered, and thereby proved to be unreal,
or real only for the purpose with which it was taken. I
do not know whether you understand this, Morosophus,
as our habits of speech render it difficult to grasp.

M. I understand at least that you destroy all reality
by rendering it relative to human purposes. For in what
way can anything be said to be absolutely real, if it is
ever dependent upon the fleeting fancy of the moment ?
And without an absolute reality what is philosophy ?

P. In one way only, and that the only philosophic
way ! The absolutely real will be that which fulfils
our every purpose, and which therefore we do not seek
to alter, but only to maintain. It will be immutable
because no one will wish it otherwise, and not because
no one is able to improve it. But your mistake lies in
supposing that such a unity or harmony already exists,
as something we can start from. And you are still
more mistaken, if you suppose that because it does not
appear to exist, what appears to exist is not real, but the

322 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xiv

outcome of some strange illusion. The absolutely real
can be reached only through the apparently real, by re-
moulding it into a perfect harmony. And whether you
or I can achieve this, I cannot tell ; but that we should
attempt it is clearly fitting, and is the only thing that
matters."

Philonous. I cannot help stopping you, Antimorus, to
say how greatly your Protagoras delights me ! What I
had always disliked about what I was taught to believe
his doctrine was its preference for what is merely human,
and relative, and happens in experience. For this seemed
to leave me with nothing firm and fixed and certain.
And so I longed for something not dependent on ex-
perience, and the Ideas of Plato and even the immutable
One of Parmenides, though one felt they were far from
desirable in many other respects and hardly related to
most of our interests, seemed a sort of guarantee that
all order would not be swept away in a chaotic flux of
happenings. But now it seems that I was wrong, and
that we may look hopefully to the future for the realiza-
tion of all our desires, if only we will bestir ourselves to
bring about what seems the best ! But I interrupted you,
and am still eager to hear how the argument went on.
With such dazzling prospects it must have reached a
glorious conclusion. Tell me, did Protagoras persuade
Morosophus, as he has persuaded me ?

Antimorus. Of course not ; in real life an argument
does not conclude, like one of Plato's dialogues, at its
best. You have heard the best part of my notes, and I
will spare you the rest.

P. But will you not tell me how it ended ?

A. Morosophus, who to do him justice was clever
enough in his way, at once began to dispute the reality of
change, which, he said, Protagoras had assumed. You
know how hard it is to refute these Eleatic tricksters, who
will not look at the plain facts of common experience, and
Protagoras had not got far into his explanation before
that young ass, Sophomorus, interrupted and insisted

XIV PROTAGORAS THE HUMANIST 323

on bringing out some more of his " whips." And so
Protagoras, courteous as ever, was forced to reply to
further futilities about the true and the useful, of the sort
which are now being called sophistries, but might more
fitly be called philosophemes, seeing that philosophers
have invented nearly all of them.

P. What was the question about the true and the
useful ?

A. The question was whether when Protagoras had
asserted that the true was useful he had also to admit
that the useful was true, and so either that any lie which
was convenient for a passing purpose was absolutely true,
or that truth was unmeaning. And so the end was that
Protagoras, after pointing out that if he admitted that the
useful was always true he would have to admit what he
had always denied, viz. that there was useless know-
ledge, had to give Sophomorus a lesson in elementary
logic.

P. And did you never learn from Protagoras by doing
what he thought we might attain the end which he divined,
the harmony which is absolutely real, or the absolute
reality which is a perfect harmony ?

A, Not with any exactness. For Protagoras did not
suppose that he had found more than the beginnings of
the way. And the whole, he said, would be long and diffi-
cult, and fit only for the strong and brave. But though
he was ever zealous that we should trust all our powers
to help us in our quest, yet he seemed to rely most on
the increase of knowledge^ and was wont to deny that any
knowledge was useless, because it was always a way of
mastering the real.

P. How splendid ! I do not understand how you
can speak about it all so calmly ! Why have you not
cried out aloud this Truth of Protagoras throughout the
cities of the Hellenes ?

A. And why have I become the priest of Dionysus ?
Did I not tell you why? I am old, oh grandson of
Eudora, and you are very young ; but you would have to
live to be far older than ever I shall be, before you could

324 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xiv

persuade the Hellenes or Barbarians to care about the
Truth ! Had I done as you bid me, I should soon have
needed the hellebore of Anticyra to escape the hemlock
of Athens ! Can you wonder that one who had seen
and suffered so much should prefer the sweet poison of
Mende ?

P. But in Mende at least you might have made a
beginning. Nay, we might still ! For in all the city
who is there so well-born as you, the Asclepiad, or I, the
Nelid, and as highly thought of? And who as clever?
Why should we not easily persuade the Mendeans of this
new " Truth," and even be honoured for teaching it ?

A, I will tell you why, Philonous. Because " truth "
for the Mendeans lies in wine alone, and the true is profit-
able only in this form. Because it was not given to the
Asclepiads to cure men of their folly. Because I am the
priest of Dionysus, to honour whom is to disgrace oneself,
and it beseems me least of all men to introduce new
worships. Because the Mendeans will elect a Nelid gladly
enough as their general, if you ask them, but will never
honour you, or any one, as their teacher. For what they
will want of you is not truth but victory.

P. But I care not whether they honour me or not, nor
value the petty prizes of their politics. I will live for
truth alone, whether it benefits others, or only me.

A. If you can, Philonous. But it seems to me more
likely that the Mendeans will not let you. They will
force you to die the beautiful death of a patriot, in some
silly skirmish with the boors of Thrace or with the stout
burghers of Stagira. As for me, I am too old, and should
be thinking of that last long journey to the house of
Hades, to the vile inn (jravSoKeiov) that receives us all, the
best and the worst alike, and yet is never full.

P. Has your philosophy, then, no cure for the fear of
death ?

A. Because it has none for the love of ignorance !
For knowledge is power, knowledge is life, while ignorance
is death, and leads to death, and ends in death. And
because the many have loved ignorance and hate the

XIV PROTAGORAS THE HUMANIST 325

truth, I too must soon descend, together with the rest,
unknowing but not unresentful.

P. You think, then, that our Vision of Truth was but
a madman's dream ?

A, Let us dismiss both vain dreams and maddening
realities t * * * And yet the dreams may be truer than
the realities, if the better be the truer ! Nay, this life itself
may be wholly, or in part, an evil dream. But who knows,
and why torment ourselves ? We two at least shall never
know. We were born too early by ten thousand years.
Come therefore, let us flee to the consolations of the god
I serve, and pledge me copious cups of this my sovereign
anodyne !

A DIALOGUE CONCERNING GODS
AND PRIESTS

Philonous \ r iv/1 J Protagoras of Abdera

Antimorus j ^^ ^ Meletus of Athens

ARGUMENT

Philonous asks Antimorus whether he agrees with Protagoras's agnostic
attitude towards the gods. Antimorus will not tell him, but criticizes
the arguments for the existence of gods propounded by Philonous.
(i) That from the existence of priests: can they serve the non-
existent? It is objected that this would prove too much. (2) God
as the One. But does not this reduce all human reality to illusion
and separate it wholly from ' God ' ? The logical difficulties about
predicating unity of our world. If unity is inapplicable, is it not
meaningless to call the One ' God ' ? (3) The argument from human
desire. It is an indispensable condition of the discovery of gods, but
primarily proves only their psychological reality. Have then real gods
been discovered thus ? asks Philonous. Antimorus again excuses him-
self, but reads him a conversation of Protagoras with Meletus, explaining
his seeming agnosticism. Philonous gives up the problem, and is con-
soled with an Egyptian Myth.

Philonotis. I can never sufficiently make out from what
you say, Antimorus, whether or not you believe in the
gods, or agree with your master Protagoras that their
existence lies beyond our ken. And, ever since the day
when I went to see you in preference to the play, you
have been so kind to me that I am sure you will pardon
me when I beg you to remove my perplexity. For the
matter, assuredly, is one of no slight importance, alike for
public and for private affairs. For if there are gods, as
nearly all men profess to believe, is it not most important
that men should win their approval by worshipping them
aright, it may be in ways very different from those now

326

XV GODS AND PRIESTS 327

in vogue among the Hellenes and among the Barbarians ?
If, again, there are no gods, why should we both publicly
and in private spend so much money on sacrifices and
costly temples, and expect vainly, as gifts from the gods,
benefits which we might perchance secure by our own
exertions ? I am sure that you must have reflected on
these things far longer and more deeply than I have yet
been able to do, and so I am in hopes that you can answer
my question.

Antimorus. You are looking very well to day, my
dear Philonous, and your question is a good one. More-
over, it touches a subject which is very nearly as import-
ant as men profess to think it, and much more important
than they really think it. But I am the last person, not
only in Mende but in the world, to answer it. You surely
cannot have forgotten that I am myself a priest ?

P. Of course not ; but what of that ? Nay, are not
priests of all men the most likely to know whether or not
the gods exist ?

A. How charming of you, Philonous, to say this !
But even if you think priests the most likely to know,
do you also think them the most likely to tell ?

P. Yes : if there are gods.

A. And if not, what? Or if they do not know ?

P. It seems to me, Antimorus, that one might, in a
manner, argue from the existence of priests to that of
gods. For if there were no gods, would there be priests
to serve them ? How could they serve the non-existent ?

A. Very subtle, and better than most of the argu-
ments of theologians ! And so you would say that
because I am the priest of Dionysus there must be a
Divine Drunkard, and because there are Atti, a Mother of
the Gods ? Would you argue similarly from the worships
of the Egyptians that there must be a Divine Crocodile
and a Divine Jackal and a Divine Onion ?

P. It does seem a little absurd.

A. Not a little. And are not Divine Men and
Women just as absurd ?

P. I suppose so. But nevertheless there are some

328 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xv

of the gods whom I should be sorry to lose. Apollo, for
example, and the Muses. But no doubt you are right,
and we should worship no god but the one who moves
and lives in all things, taking all shapes but tied to none,
and exceeding far in beauty and goodness and health and
might all notions men can frame.

A. It is Proteus, I suppose, whom you mean ?

P. Never ! The God I mean is no juggler. He
is the One and the All, that has made the "world, and
made it a Cosmos. For surely there must be some reason
why the world is one, and all things work together for
good ?

A. And you think that the Cause of this should be
deemed the Deity ?

P. Yes, and a God of all gods, who must needs
exist, because his existence is revealed in all things that
exist. This is the God too whom philosophers seem
to me to hint at, though obscurely. And does he not
seem to you the offspring of a noble thought ?

A. So noble that it seems to me oblivious of the
simple truth. Too noble to have a humble origin in the
facts of life. While as for the philosophers, so far from
rendering God's existence certain and necessary, they seem
rather to render it impossible !

P. How so ?

A. Did you not say God was the One and the All ?

P. Yes.

A. And also that he excelled in beauty and goodness
and might ?

P. It is as all-good, and all-beautiful, and all-mighty
that I would conceive him.

A. Would you say, then, that because all things
are God, all things are good and beautiful ? And if
the Many, though one in God, yet contend against each
other, would you say that God was divided against him-
self, and distracted by intestine war ? And is he such as
to delight in this condition ? Or is he discordant and
miserable, and unable to cure himself of this disease ?
Or is he perchance wholly unaware of the plight we see

XV GODS AND PRIESTS 329

him to be in ? As for his might, how would you measure
it ? Can you measure it, if there is nothing to measure it
upon ? If all things are but manifestations of God's
power, and his playthings, if in all conflicts God is merely
sparring with himself, how can you know whether or not
his might is irresistible ? What, therefore, does almighty
power mean ?

P. These are difficulties I had never thought of,
and I do not feel that I can answer you sufficiently at
present. But I am unwilling to yield to you wholly,
Antimorus. And so might one not hold that God at
heart is good and beautiful, even though many things
seem otherwise to us ; that he is not really struggling
against himself, though we as parts, who cannot see the
whole, seem to see him so ; and that so the disease of the
world is curable, nay cured, because it is not real ?

A. One might indeed, Philonous, on one condition.

P. And what is that ?

A. You can save the perfection of the One by
sacrificing all on the altar of the One, and condemning
the Many to utter unreality.

P. How?

A. It is true that the troubles of the Many and the
imperfections of appearances cannot mar the perfection
of the One, if they exist only for us, and not for it.
But then we also cannot exist for it. For our troubles
are inherent in our nature, and to get rid of them the One
would have also to get rid of us.

P. But might they not be our illusion ?

A. Yet is not the illusion inevitable and existent ?

P. Perhaps.

A. And if it is inevitable, is it not real ?

P. Not if the One does not suffer from it. For all
things truly are as they appear to it, and not to us.

A. I am glad you said this ; for it is just what I
was wishing you to see. If things truly are as they
appear to the One, then they can never appear to us
as they truly are. And conversely, the One can never
perceive things as they truly appear to us. You can

330 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xv

make the One perfect, but at the cost of separating it
from a world which is utterly unreal, and would be
abhorrent to its unpolluted calm. Consider now the con-
sequences.

P. What ?

A. You have imagined an image of divine perfec-
tion. But that image floats above our world, and nowhere
touches it. The One cannot know our existence, and if
it could know it, could regard it only as a disordered
nightmare. It can afford us, therefore, no assistance
toward the betterment of life. How then have we
secured its divine aid ? And is not the disease of appear-
ance incurable, just because it is imaginary and unreal,
and God takes no note of it ? What then have we gained
by convicting ourselves and our knowledge of illusion ?
And worst of all, we have not even got an answer to our
question.

P. To what question ?

A. To the question how our argument could climb
from earth to heaven, and infer the existence of a god
from the nature of the world.

P. Yet did we not find a ladder ?

A. But so queer a one that we had to cast it down
immediately v/e got to heaven. And when we got to
heaven no one would take notice of us — we were treated
as unreal. And to earth we cannot redescend. Or do
you see a way ?

P. Not from our present position. But tell me,
how would it be if we gave up the notion that the
One is beautiful and good — for it is this which seems
to be impracticable ?

A. By all means give it up. But how would you
proceed ?

P. After all, goodness and beauty are only human
feelings, which we might as rightly hesitate to ascribe
to God as human shapes and human passions. And
so might we not worship him as simply great ?

A. There are those, no doubt, who would be willing
to do this.

XV GODS AND PRIESTS 331

P. And why not you ?

A. I am not so ready to give up the search for
beauty and goodness in the cosmos. I will not worship
mere greatness, nor deem a whale more admirable than a
man simply because he is many times as large.

P. But has not the argument shown that the Divine
cannot be beautiful and good ?

A. Or that what is not beautiful and good cannot
be called divine ?

P. How do you mean ?

A. I mean that if the One is neither of these things,
I will not worship it, nor call it God. If it is indifferent
to our good, I am indifferent to its existence.

P, But have you not still ground to fear it ? Will it
not resent your indifference ?

A. Why should it ? I too am part of it, if I am at
all, fashioned by it to please itself. And if it is indifferent
to what seems good to man, why should it care about
what seems evil to man ?

P, But how if its nature was to resent all disrespect,
and while not rewarding the good, to inflict evil on the
imprudent or irreverent ?

A. Why should my irreverence offend rather than
amuse it ? And why should it inflict evil on itself
because a part of itself offended it ? Besides, if this were
somehow possible, you would only have turned your god
into an evil demon. And even so, I should not reason-
ably change my conduct.

P. Why not ? Would you not be made to suffer
for it ?

A. I might be made to suffer for my impiety, but
not more probably than you for your piety. For, being
evil, the Demon would dole out evils to all, to good and
bad alike.

P. I do not see that. Why?

A. Because if he did not, but allowed himself to be
propitiated by rites, however strange and horrible, there
would be a way of making him good. For he would
cease to be evil to those who propitiated him, and so

333 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xv

would become good, and this would be contrary to our
hypothesis.

P. It would seem then that the One can be neither
good nor evil, but must be indifferent.

A. But if it is indifferent, does it remain an object
of worship ?

P. It seems not.

A. If this then be truth, shall we not be really
atheists ?

P. Hardly that. For do you not think that it
will still be a great gain, not perhaps for purposes of
public worship, but for the private communings of the
soul, that we should feel that we do not live at random
in a random concourse of things, but in a cosmos which
is truly one ?

A. You are satisfied with small gains, if you think
this one. Still even small gains are not despicable, if
they are sure. But who can feel sure about this gain
of yours ?

P. What ? Do you think an error still lurks in my
argument ?

A. No, but that it flaunts itself over its whole
surface.

P. Do you not admit, then, that the universe is
one ? I do not see how any one can doubt this.

A. Not if you define the universe amiss.

P. How ?

A. As the totality of things known and unknown.

P. And is not this the right definition ?

A. Only for one desiring to beg the real question.

P. I do not understand.

A. Do you suppose that what you now perceive and
know is all that is and was and ever will be, the whole
universe in short?

P. Of course not, nor what any man perceives and
knows.

A. It is possible, therefore, that additions may be
made to the known universe out of the multitude of
unknown things ?

XV GODS AND PRIESTS 333

P. Yes, I suppose so.

A. How would you ascertain whether these additions
were really new births within the universe, or really
additions from without, from what had not before formed
part of it ?

P. I hardly know.

A. Nor I. But see what follows.

P. I am looking eagerly.

A. The world at every moment would appear
to you to be such that it might either give birth to
endless novelties within itself, or come into contact with
illimitable realities, which had until then existed out of
connexion with it. Your conception, therefore, of the
whole as one^ could never cover all that was. There
would always be a Many bursting into or out, in what
you had taken to be one. And so in neither case could
its unity ever be effectively maintained, could you ever
get an assurance that you really knew all there was.

P. I suppose not.

A. Then what sense is there in calling our world
the universe ? The universe is the totality of things ;
but to this totality we do not attain, nor could we
know it, if we did. We can never make certain, therefore,
that we are dealing with the real universe, that we have
really got all things together in a universe, and that what
is true of it is true of the things we know.

P. But would not this uncertainty make it the more
interesting ?

A. Perhaps ; but it would spoil your argument from
the notion of a universe.

P. How ?

A. Because you could never apply your notion
to the world you lived in. That the universe was the
totality of existences no one need trouble to deny. For
the notion could never be applied. Nor would you, by
possessing it, learn anything about the world you lived in.
For that the world we know was the totality of things
could never be asserted. And what we thought about
the world would never justify prediction : it would always

334 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xv

be at the mercy of the changes introduced by the new
things that entered it

P. Would you explain this further ?

A. It is very simple. If you don't know the whole
of a thing and are in doubt about its character, may not
your opinion alter as you get to know more of it ?

P. Not unreasonably.

A. It will seem, therefore, better or worse as a whole,
according as the new parts of it seem better or worse ?

P. Certainly.

A. If, then, God is the whole, and the whole we
know is not the true whole but a part, will not our
reverence for an incomplete whole, of necessity be the
worship of a false god ?

P. Perhaps.

A. And, moreover, will not God for us grow with
our knowledge, growing better or worse, or better and
worse alternately, without ceasing?

P. It will be very inconvenient, if he grows very
different !

A. It will. And do you not think, therefore, that it
will be very inconvenient to worship such a thing at all ?

P. It would not be as delightful as I had hoped.

A, It would be quite as absurd as worshipping
the onion. And not nearly so useful. For you can
use the onion, and if need be eat it, ere it grows too
large, but what can any man do with the universe ?

P. Is it then the desire of Antimorus the Wise
that I should proclaim him priest of the Non-existent,
and must we once more call ourselves atheists ?

A. By no means. Remember that I am priest.

P. Aye, a priest who refutes all gods !

A. No, who refutes bad arguments. When have I
ever said there were no gods ?

P. But have you not refuted all the arguments the
human mind has conceived ?

A. All, perhaps, thdA. your mind has conceived.

P. Has yours, then, conceived others ?

A. Perhaps.

XV GODS AND PRIESTS 335

P. Then lose no time in telling me.

A. They are, perhaps, not so different from yours.

P. Then why did you refute mine ?

A. Perhaps they were not rightly stated, nor rightly
argued from. You are ever so hasty, Philonous, and
too eager to make an argument achieve more than its
strength will bear. And when it does not at once do
what you wish, you reject it utterly ; whereas you should
not make a leaping-pole out of a reed.

P. What strength is left in any of the arguments I
mentioned ? Have you not laid them low one by one
without exception ?

A. The first one, about the connexion between the
existence of priests and of gods, was not a bad one.

P. You mean that there cannot be priests unless
there are gods ? But is it not possible that priests
should be instituted by deluded men of false gods, and
so exist, even though there are no gods at all ?

A. Not quite that : you must look at things more
subtly.

P. How then ?

A. Leaving aside the gods for a time, let me ask
you why you suppose that priests exist ?

P. That is hard to say. I have often wondered why.

A. You would not say, I suppose, that priests
exist because gods exist ?

P. No ; for what we are trying to prove is that
gods exist because priests exist.

A. Nor yet that there are priests in order that they
may have superior knowledge of divine things ?

P. But surely they do ! You are the first priest
I have known who did not profess to have ; and even
as to you I am not sure.

A. The knowledge I mean is not concerning sacred
stories, of which indeed they know a great abundance :
it concerns such matters as we have been conversing
about, the cause of being and of life and of suffering
and of evil, and the things after death and in Hades.
Have you ever anywhere met a priest who could give

336 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xv

a reasonable account about such things, or answer
questions such as would be asked about them by a
reasonable man desirous of clear notions ?

P. Not unless you are the man !

A. However much you flatter me, I fear that I shall
disappoint you.

P. Not unless you break off the inquiry !

A. Then you must suggest a better reason for the
existence of priests.

P. Shall we say that we must have them in order
that the sacred rites may be performed aright?

A. Yes, that is a better answer. For assuredly
it is for the sake of ritual rather than of philosophy that
men need priests. But why do they need ritual ?

P. It seems so natural. Perhaps without it many
would become disorderly, and so it is beneficial to the
State.

A. Do you think that our Bacchanalian festivals are
conducive to good order ?

P. Perhaps not, but does not the fear of Zeus, the
guardian of the oath, stop men from swearing falsely ?

A. How strange then that perjury is still so
common ! Or how weak the fear of Zeus ! Or will you
say perhaps that it is fear of some stronger god than
Zeus which leads men to forswear themselves ? And do
you not fear that the fear of Zeus will lead men to
imitate him in other ways as well ?

P. A god may do without blame what it would
be atrocious for a man to do.

A. How then is a man to know whether it is good
to do as the gods, or bad ?

P. I confess, Antimorus, I cannot defend the actions
of the gods as they are narrated, and that the sacred
stories seem to me most impious. That is just why I am
so anxious to know what to think about the whole matter.

A. Well said. But you have not yet told me what
need men have for priests.

P. I can perceive none, and yet I arn persuaded
that they need them. Perhaps it is just a desire.

XV GODS AND PRIESTS 337

A. Very good indeed ! We have priests because we
need them, and need them to satisfy our desire. And
what do priests desire ?

P. Gods, I should think.

A. Excellent ! And do you think that they alone
desire gods ?

P. No, we all do, except perhaps a few scoundrels
who dread their vengeance.

A. Good again ! Are we not agreed, then, that
gods are the embodiments of human desires, and exist
as surely, and as long, as the desires which they gratify ?
Can you wonder any longer that Bacchus is a god, and
Plutus, and Aphrodite, and the Onion ? For are they
not all objects of desire ?

P. It seems to me, Antimorus, that you go too
fast, and prove too much. If you could prove any god
thus, you would certainly prove the existence of the
Divine Lust and the Divine Onion. And was it not just
by adducing these that you laughed me out of my argu-
ment that the existence of priests involved that of their
gods ? You have substituted the worshippers for the
priests as the causes of the gods' existence, but otherwise
the argument is the same.

A. Pardon me, Philonous, it was you who dropped
the argument at the first touch of ridicule. You will
never be a great philosopher until you consent to make
yourself very ridiculous, and to laugh at your own ideas
as well as at those of others. For if the truth did not
seem ridiculous and paradoxical, do you suppose that
errors would be so common, so commonplace, so solemn,
and so reputable ?

P. Even so, I think there are objections to your
argument.

A. Then let us discuss them before we go further.

P. Well then, in the first place, if desire makes
gods, can it not also unmake them ?

A. No doubt, but desires are far more permanent
than philosophies or theologies.

P. Again, I do not admit that the desire for a thing

338 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xv

is a reason for thinking that that thing exists, or in
any way brings it into existence. The desire for food
does not feed me, nor make me wealthy. Nor do the
Helmet of Hades and the Elixir of Life exist because
I should greatly desire them. And in this case of the
gods this magic of desire is the less likely to have
creative power, seeing that a god is a more difficult and
precious thing for a desire to make than even an elixir
of life.

A. You argue well against a doctrine I have not
affirmed. For the gods I spoke of as creations of desire,
I supposed to exist in the opinions of men, and not on
the heights of Olympus.

P. Then they do not really exist ?

A. Yes, they do really exist in the souls of men.
And it is there that they are most potent, and far excel
the dwellers of far-away Olympus, seeing that they are
so much nearer.

P. But that is not what I meant, nor what men
commonly mean when they ask about the existence of
the gods. They inquire about gods who hold the shining
mansions of the skies, and not about those who hold the
hearts of men.

A. You admit, then, the existence of these latter?

P. Yes, but they do not answer my question, and
have no connexion with the real gods.

A. That remains to be seen. For we must advance
step by step, and before we try to climb the heights of
Olympus, we must try to fathom the depths of human
nature. For I should not wonder if the latter showed us
the way to the former.

P. I do not oppose your considering them if you
please.

A. That is right, my dear Philonous ; for you have
escaped your own notice saying some very wrong things
about the gods who are born of desire and dwell in the
souls of men.

P. What, pray, are these ?

A. Did you not say that your desire for food had no

XV GODS AND PRIESTS 339

power to make you believe that food existed, or to satisfy
your hunger ?

P. How can it have ? The desire has no arms and
legs !

A. No ; but you have. Have you not observed
four things ? First, that men do not usually get de-
sirable things unless they actually desire them : next,
that if they desire them, they usually find a way of
getting them : thirdly, that when a thing is desired, there
is apt to arise a belief that it is existent and attainable :
and lastly, that when it is attained, it is often supposed to
have existed all along.

P. But it does not become existent because it is
desired. Nor is it attained because it is desired, but
because it exists.

A. Quite right ! But you would admit, I suppose,
that it might remain unknown to all eternity, for lack
of a desire to know it ?

P. Certainly.

A. And so, as no one looked for it, no one found it,
and it remained non-existent for us ?

P. Certainly.

A. Desire then is the cause of our discovery of that
which exists beyond our former knowledge ?

P. It may often be this. But only if we are willing
to bestir ourselves to get what we desire.

A. Doubtless. But does it seem to you reason-
able that the man who will not act nor trouble himself
to look, should be thought deserving of truth or know-
ledge any more than of any other good thing ?

P. Perhaps not.

A. Is he not as silly as the sophist's ass, who was
so consumed with desire that he could himself consume
neither of the two bundles of hay before his nose, and
wasted away ?

P. I do not believe that any real ass would be as
stupid as Buridan's.

A. Nor any real philosopher. Even Thales was
practical enough when put to it. He made a fortune

340 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xv

by cornering the oil presses. They show " the philo-
sopher's corner " still in the market at Miletus.

P. So I have heard, and I am sure the others, much
as they profess to scorn wealth, are secretly consumed
with envy, and really proud of Thales.

A. And rightly too ! But I must not forget that just
now I made a mistake to gratify you.

P. What was that?

A. I admitted that a desire could not make its object.

P. Why ought you not to have admitted this ?

A. Because it sometimes can.

P. How ?

A. Have you not observed how many desires bring
about their own satisfaction and make real their own
objects ?

P. For example ?

A. I will take one with which you doubtless are
familiar. Is it not true that the lover desires his be-
loved to return his love, and if he loves wisely and fortu-
nately, does not his desire awaken a responsive passion in
the beloved ? And so has not the desire for love impelled
love, to make love real ?

P, Yes, but the desire makes real what was not
reil before. It does not prove that what was desired
existed before it was desired. It lied, therefore, in assum-
ing this.

A. Say rather, it hoped for the best ! Or if it lied,
was it not the noblest lie ?

P. What is that ?

A. That which is prophetic of the truth, and engenders
it. But I am not sure that it lied. For I never said that
the object desired must exist before the desire which creates
it. It is enough that it should have been created by the
desire for it. And this assuredly is what the desire for
gods should have done for us. Perhaps it will also some
day make them good and kind and responsive to our
wishes.

P. I begin to understand your gods that live in the
hearts of men. They are real as the ideal responses to

XV GODS AND PRIESTS 341

real human needs, which really move us. But I do not
yet perceive their connexion with the gods that live above,
the real gods as I called them.

A. That surely is not difficult. If we must seek,
to find, desire, to know, it is clear that the inner gods
alone control the roads that lead to the gods above, and
render them propitious to our wishes. They are our
intermediaries. They hold the gates through which all
our prayers and petitions must ascend. And by them too
all the messages from above are re-worded and translated
from the language of the gods into a speech our souls can
comprehend. Nor is there any other way by which the
real gods can be reached.

P. It seems a long way, and we may not yet have
reached them.

A. Aye, and we may not have wanted to ! Or,
having set out, we may have turned back in dismay.

P. At last we are getting to the point ! Do you
think that we have now reached the point where the
gods above us and without us can communicate with
those within, and transmit their will to us ?

A. I have long feared that we might reach a point
at which it would no longer be holy for me to answer
you. For by the body of my Lord Bacchus, I dare not
say no ! And how can you ask one who has studied the
rites of many gods among the Hellenes and the barbarians
to say frankly yes ?

P. Then you will disappoint me at the end ?

A. I told you that I should. But I will treat
you to something better than my own opinions, to the
thoughts of my great master Protagoras, whose mouth was
not sealed and whose office was to teach the truth freely.

P. I shall be delighted to hear more of Protagoras.

A. You know that he was gravely suspected of
impiety and atheism ?

P. Yes.

A, Unjustly indeed, but not without plausibility.
For how much satisfaction could the established rites
offer to one like Protagoras who, being deeply con-

342 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xv

cerned about divine things and the wonders of existence,
really wanted to know, and would not content himself
with ' sacred stories ' ?

P. To me also they often seem to be stories told to
children, and not good even for them.

A. Well, you shall hear how Protagoras dealt with
Meletus, the tragic poet, who was as a tragic poet comic,
and as a theologian tragic.

P. The same who accused Socrates ?

A. Yes, but that was later. He had been reading
Protagoras's new book on Truth, and like most men
had not really understood a word. For truth was but
a word to him, and he had never asked himself what
it was in very deed. But of course he had been stirred
up by the saying about the gods. And so he naturally
taxed Protagoras with atheism. You shall hear how
skilfully the master answered him.

{Gets out a roll and reads?)

" Protagoras. You are mistaken surely, Meletus, if you
think that I have denied that there are gods. I only said
that I had neither met them, nor been able to find out
anything for certain about them. And so I am to be
pitied rather than blamed : for surely no one is ignorant
of his own will ; the fault therefore is not mine, but that
of others, whether of the gods or of men, I cannot say.

Meletus. But it is your fault, if you have been un-
willing either to inquire diligently into the stories men
tell about the gods or to believe them when they were
told you.

P. Once more you are mistaken, Meletus. For I
have, as you know, travelled far and long throughout
Hellas, and from my youth I have always asked the
wisest men concerning what they knew about the gods,
wherever I went. And they were always glad to tell me
their sacred stories, which I noted down. I now have a
large collection of them, which some might think most
entertaining. But as for believing them, why not even
Herodotus could compass that ! In Thessaly, for example.

XV GODS AND PRIESTS 343

they will tell you that Zeus lives on a mountain named
Olympus, but in Asia they tell you, no, the mountain is
in Mysia, and with them Homer also seems to hold. In
Crete, again, they affirm stoutly that Zeus no longer lives
at all, in token whereof they even show his sepulchre.
In Arcadia, Artemis is the Huntress-Maid, in Ephesus she
is a mother with more breasts than any sow. And so
forth, that I may mention nothing more unseemly.
Which, then, of these stories do you wish me to believe,
seeing that they cannot all be true ?

M. With the gods all things are possible, and it
is impious to question sacred stories.

P. That is just what I cannot think. For it seems
to m.e that the sacred stories malign the gods, if there
are gods, and were the inventions of wicked men. Or
else they have become wicked by the lapse of time,
because they were thought too sacred to be retold in
ways befitting the greater insight of a later age.

M. No. The sacred stories are told by holy men,
priests, and if you would reverently listen to them, you
would know what to think. You should honour the
priests, therefore, and believe what they tell you.

P. But do the priests themselves know ?

M. They, if any men. For they have preserved the
revelations made by the gods of old.

P. It seems to me that if so, they have preserved
them very badly. And who knows whether the stories
are now told as they happened ?

M. You will find that they tell the sacred stories
precisely as they received them from their ancestors, many
of whom were themselves children of the gods and must
surely have known their parents. And so it is reasonable
to believe that the sacred tradition is exact, and that we
know quite as much about the gods as those did to whom
they revealed themselves.

P. That is just what I complain of, and what leads
me to fear that the priests know no more than I !

M. How so ?

P. You said, did you not, that the priests know

344 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xv

the revelations made by the gods of old, both con-
cerning themselves and all things which it is good for
man to know ?

M. I did.

P. And you said also that they have preserved this
knowledge exactly ?

M. Certainly.

P. Then we know no less than the men of old ?

M. So I contend.

P. Nor any more ?

M. How could we, unless there had been fresh
theophanies !

P. And such there have not been ?

M. Don't you believe it !

P. And yet I have met many who affirmed this
stoutly. They seemed indeed to be somewhat ecstatic
persons, but not liars.

M. They were deceived then.

P. This I am willing to believe. But is it not
possible that your friends also were deceived, and have
handed down stories similar to those now told ?

M. Possible, but not likely.

P. Not unlikely, I should say. And in other
ways also it would seem either that the priests have
been bad guardians of sacred truths, or good guardians
of unholy falsehoods. For consider : is not the true,
good ?

M. Certainly.

P. Then to attain truth should make us better ?

M. Is not this what sacred truths do ?

P. And also better able to attain more truth ?

M. Perhaps.

P. Why then have we not attained better knowledge
of holy things by the aid of the theophanies of former
days ?

M. I cannot say.

P. Again, is it the nature of benefactors to abandon
those to whom they have shown kindness, and of the
benefited to keep away from their benefactors ?

XV GODS AND PRIESTS 345

M. It ought not to be.

P. And yet does not something of this sort seem to
happen when gods benefit men ?

M. In what way ?

P. Why, do you not think that the gods, after
bestowing on us beneficial revelations of themselves,
have withdrawn themselves from our ken ? And men
similarly, after acquiring some little knowledge of the
gods, show plainly that they desire to know no more
about them.

31. Never have I heard this said by any one,
Protagoras. But many have lamented over their ignor-
ance of the gods.

P, In words, no doubt. But do not their deeds
cry out louder than their words ? And of those who
claimed to believe in gods, have you ever found any one
to act as if this belief opened out to him a way to
real knowledge and more knowledge, and knowledge not
to be attained by those who are not willing to believe in
the gods ?

M. It is not holy to desire more knowledge than
the gods have granted, or to seek to pry into their secrets.

P. What god has revealed this to you, Meletus ?
And how else do you know that the gods do not desire
you to desire more knowledge concerning themselves
before they will, or can, reveal more ? How again do
you know that men should not pry into the secrets of
the gods ? Do you perchance suspect the gods of having
evil secrets ?

M. No, but I suspect you of undermining all
established worship, and of wishing to improve on the
gods of the city. For no religion could exist with new
knowledge and new gods and new worships ever coming
in to upset the old.

P. I wonder. And I deem it strange that in other
matters which men try and suppose themselves to know, it
is not so, but the more they know, the more eager they
grow and the more able to learn, and the greater and
stronger and more precious and more intelligible their

346 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xv

knowledge seems to them. Either, therefore, knowledge
about the gods is not really knowledge, or men are not
willing to treat it as really knowledge. In either case I
am prevented from knowing, as I said. Why then should
I be blamed ? How can I help it ? Either there is
nothing for me to know, or I am not allowed to know it.

M. Still less, Protagoras, are you allowed to in-
quire. Let me speak to you as a friend. I liked your
rhetoric, and thought your lectures the best I ever listened
to. But if you are wise, you will in the first place erase
from your book that terrible sentence about the gods, and
in the next place retire from Athens till the storm blows
over.

P. I am sure your advice is kindly meant. But
I do not at all agree with you. I would rather that
my whole book on Truth should perish — excepting of
course what I said about man being the measure, for that
I feel assured cannot die — and that that one sentence be
preserved, than that it should perish and all the rest be
preserved. For I greatly fear that the major part of my
Truth is too subtle for the dull sight of men such as now
are. And as for leaving Athens, let the Athenians drive
me out if they think fit. I am a stranger and accustomed
to A^ander over the face of the earth. And so I will wait
to see whether it will be accounted a crime in me to have
spoken and written the ' Truth.'

M. Then may the gods you doubt help you ! But
your days are numbered.

P. Are they not that in any case, to one who has
passed his three-score years and ten ? "

Antiinorus. Well, Philonous, how do you like that ?

Philonous. Wondrously, and yet it always makes me
uncomfortable, too, to listen to Protagoras or you. You
are so different from the other philosophers, and so
disturbing. You never seem to fear either the gods or
even men, and least of all, what is most terrible to the
prudent, to wit, what it has been customary to say. And
you always throw out hints of something new and un-

XV GODS AND PRIESTS 347

heard of to come, that might at any time break in upon
our life and transform it beyond all recognition. And
yet you will never tell us what you think it is.

A. So long as the unknown God is undesired,
he is unknowable. Moreover, all you ever want to
hear is a pleasing tale. You Greeks are children,
like the others. You have need of priests, because
you will not trust the gods within you ; and yet
you will not truly believe even your priests. You only
want them to sing you lullabies about the gods ; and
whatever saves you thought and trouble you are willing
to believe — after a fashion. And whether what we
chant is true and certain, you care not, provided it is
comforting, nor what our comforting is worth. And to
please you, we humour you, and tell you what you wish
to hear, even though we know that you had much better
test the hidden oracle, and seek the lonely way that leads
to the unknown God each soul that dares and perseveres.

P. I do believe you are right, Antimorus. And so
too are the others. For these things are too high for
mortals. I too am afraid ! I would rather trust priests
and rites and sacrifices and expiations and sacred stories,
nay chants and charms and amulets, than my naked self.
Philosophy becomes too terrible when it bids us do such
things.

A. You have not yet learnt that the most efficacious
of all expiations is to sacrifice your fears, and you fear
philosophy so soon as it ceases to be idle babble, and
requires you to think things out and act on your con-
victions ! But never mind, my poor boy, I will comfort
you with a most sacred story, which was told me by
the oldest of the priests of Ra at Thebes in Egypt,
a man so old and holy that he had forgotten even his
own name, and become one with his god, and answered
to the name of Ra.

P. I should dearly love to hear it.

A. You have heard, perhaps, that in truth, not
Uranus, but Eros was the oldest of the gods ?

348 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xv

P. I have heard it as a secret doctrine.

A. Consider it then to be true, if you are willing to
believe the divine genealogies of my Egyptian priest.

P. I will. But what of the rest of the genealogy ?

A. Many things he said which are contrary to received
opinions, especially holding it to be false that older
things are better, and the gods happier than mortals.
For, he said, the divinest of all things is to endure suffering
without dying. And the gods in the beginning suffered
ineffably in their endeavours to make a cosmos. And
most of all Eros, seeing that he was very eager, and yet
blind, and encompassed about with darkness. And in
darkness he would have remained, had he not encountered
Pistis,^ whose nature it is to bring light and brightness
wherever she is. And she enlightened Eros, so that he
was enabled to see, and consorting with him, she bare
Praxis,'^' who again, when she was of age, mingled with
Chaos. And there were born to Praxis and Chaos two
sons, Pragma and Prometheus, whereof the former was
very large, being a giant of a violent and intractable
disposition. And he often threatened to swallow up
both his mother and the other gods. Wherefore
Prometheus, who was crafty, slew him by stealth, and
his mother cut him up into many things,^ and thus made
the world we now inhabit. But Eros was wroth with
Prometheus, and chained him for ever to the collar-bone
of the brother he had slain — which is Mount Caucasus.

P. I suppose it is this story which Agathon means
when he says :

" Action of old discriminated all things." ^

A. Doubtless : but the time has come for my even-
ing sacrifice to Dionysus. So run away, Philonous, and
get yourself elected a general by the Mendeans. There
may not be a war after all, and even if there is, it is
easier to face the risk of death than of eternal life.

^ Faith. " Action. ^ TrpdyfjLaTa.

* npd^is TrdXa: StetXe Trdvra Trpdy/xaTa.

XVI
FAITH, REASON, AND RELIGION ^

ARGUMENT

§ I. The problem of religious philosophy that of the relations of ' faith ' and
' reason.' The rationalistic criticism of religion, and the pragmatic
criticism of rationalism. § 2. Faith as a specifically religious principle.
Its revival as a philosophic principle, and a presupposition of reason.
§ 3. The Will-to-believe and to disbelieve. Humanism as a recognition
of actual mental process. § 4. The analysis of ' reason.' § 5. Thought
dependent on postulation, i.e. 'faith.' § 6. The definition of 'faith.'
§ 7. The pragmatic testing of faith and knowledge. § 8. The incom-
pleteness of this process. § 9. The analogy of scientific and religious
faith. § 10. Their differences. § ll. Five spurious conceptions of
faith. § 12. The possibility of verifying religious postulates. § 13.
Humanist conclusions as to the philosophy of religion. The pragmatic
character of Christianity obscured by an intellectualist theology.

§ I. The nature of religion, and the extent to which
what is vaguely and ambiguously called ' faith ' and what
is (quite as vaguely and ambiguously) called * reason '
enter into it, rank high among the problems of perennial
human interest — in part, perhaps, because it seems im-
possible to arrive at any settlement which will appear
equally cogent and satisfactory to all human minds. Of
late, however, the old controversies have been rekindled
into the liveliest incandescence, in consequence of two
purely philosophic developments.

On the one hand, Absolutism, despite its long coquet-
tings with theology, has revealed itself as fundamentally
hostile to popular religion (see Essay xii.). In works like

1 This essay appeared in substance in the Hibbert Jotirnal for January 1906.
It has been retouched in a few places to fit it more effectively for its place in
this volume.

349

350 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvi

Mr. Bradley's Appearance and Reality, and still more
formidably, because more lucidly and simply, in Dr.
McTaggart's Some Dogmas of Religion, it has reduced
Christian Theism to what seems a position of grotesque
absurdity by an incisive criticism from which there is no
escape so long as its victim accepts the rationalistic tests
and conceptions of truth and proof with which it operates.

On the other hand, it has simultaneously happened
that just these tests and conceptions have been impugned,
and to a large extent condemnecj, by the pragmatic
movement in philosophy. It threatens to deprive Ration-
alism ^ of its favourite weapons just as it is about to drive
them home. It promises to lead to a far juster and more
sympathetic, because more psychological, appreciation of
the postulates of the religious consciousness, and to
render possible an unprejudiced consideration of the
non-' rational ' and non- rationalistic evidence on which
religion has all along relied. And so rationalistic
philosophers have at once taken alarm.

Hence, though this movement appears to affect imme-
diately nothing but technicalities of the theory of knowledge,
it has been extensively taken as an attempt at a revolution-
ary reversal of the relations of Faith and Reason. The new
philosophy was promptly accused of aiming at the oppres-
sion, nay, at the subversion, of Reason, of paving the way
to the vilest obscurantism and the grossest superstition with
the ruins of the edifice of truth which its scepticism had
exploded ; in short, of attempting to base Religion on
the quicksands of irrationality. But, it was urged, the
dangerous expedients which are used recoil upon their
authors: the appeal to the will -to -believe ends by
sanctioning the arbitrary adoption of any belief any one
may chance to fancy, and thus destroys all objectivity
in religious systems ; religious sentiment is freed from the
repressive regime of a rigid rationalism only to be ignobly
dissipated in excesses of subjective licence.

^ lam using the term strictly as='ft belief in the all-sufficiency of reason,'
and not in its popular sense as =' criticism of religion.' A rationalist in the
strict sense may, of course, be religious, and per cojitra a voluntarist, or a
sensationalist, may be a rationalist in the popular sense.

XVI FAITH, REASON, AND RELIGION 351

Now, the first thing that strikes one about such
denunciations is their premature violence. The opponents
of the new Htimanisjn should have met it on the logical,
and still more on the psychological, ground whence its
challenge proceeded, before they hastened to extract from
it religious applications which had certainly not been
made, and possibly were not even intended, by its authors,
and which there is, as yet, hardly a sign, in this country
at least, that the spokesmen of the religious organizations
are willing to welcome. And until the leaders of the
churches show more distinct symptoms of interest, both
in the disputes of philosophers in general and in this
dispute in particular, it seems premature to anticipate
from this source the revolution which is decried in ad-
vance. Theologians, in general, have heard * Wolf ! '
cried too often by philosophers anxious to invoke against
their opponents more forcible arguments than those of
mere reason, they have found too often how treacherous
were the specious promises of philosophic support, they
are too much absorbed in historical and critical researches
and perplexities of their own to heed lightly outcries of
this sort.

The controversy, then, has not yet descended from the
study into the market-place, and it seems still time to
attempt to estimate philosophically the real bearing of
Humanism on the religious problem, and to define the
functions which it actually assigns to reason and to faith.
It may reasonably be anticipated that the results of the
inquiry will be found to justify neither the hopes of those
who expect an explicit endorsement of any sectarian
form of religion (if such there are), nor the fears of those
who dread a systematic demolition of the reason.

§ 2. Perhaps a brief historic retrospect will form the
best approach to the points at issue. Thoughtful
theologians have always perceived, what their rationalistic
critics have blindly ignored, viz. that religious truths are
not, like mathematical, such as directly and universally
to impose themselves on all minds. They have seen, that
is, that the religious attitude essentially implies the

352 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvi

addition of what was called ' faith ' for its proper apprecia-
tion. This ' faith,' moreover, was conceived as an in-
tensely personal act, as an emotional reaction of a man's
whole nature upon a vital issue. It followed that it
was unreasonable, on the part of rationalists, to ignore
this specific character of religious truth or to treat it as
irrational. And it was this perception which prompted
a Pascal to array the ' reasons of the heart ' against
the (abstract) reasons of ' the head,' a Nev/man to compile
his Grammar of Assent, and a Ritschl to spurn the
i;;Seudo-demonstrations of (a Hegelian) philosophy, and
iO construct an impregnable citadel for the religious
sentiment in the exalted sphere of ' judgments of value.'

Accordingly, when that great student of the human
soul, William James, proclaimed the right of inclining
the nicely-weighted equipoise of intellectual argumentation
by throwing into the scales a will-to-believe whichever
of the alternatives seemed most consonant with our
emotional nature, it might well have seemed that he was
merely reviving and re-wording a familiar theological
expedient which philosophy had long ago discredited as
the last desperate resource of an expiring religious
instinct.

It turned out, however, that there was an important
novelty in the doctrine as revived. It reappeared as a
philosophic doctrine, firmly resting on psychological and
epistemological considerations which were, intrinsically,
quite independent of its religious applications, and took
the field quite prepared to conduct, on purely philosophic
grounds, a vigorous campaign against the intellectualist
prejudices of the current rationalism. In other words, by
conceiving the function of ' faith ' as an example of
a general principle, the religious applications, through
which the principle had first been noticed and tested,
were rendered derivative illustrations of a far-reaching
philosophic view. It ceased, therefore, to be necessary to
oppose the reasons of the heart to those of the head ; it
could be maintained that no ' reasons ' could be ex-
cogitated by an anaemic brain to which no heart supplied

XVI FAITH, REASON, AND RELIGION 353

the life-blood ; it could be denied that the operations of
the * illative sense ' and the sphere of value-judgments
were restricted to religious truths. The new philosophy,
moreover, as we have seen,^ has been taught by the
sceptical results to which the old abstractions led, that
knowledge cannot be depersonalized, and that the full
concreteness of personal interest is indispensable for the
attainment of truth. Hence the theologians' insistence on
the personal character of ' faith,' which on the old assump-
tions had seemed a logical absurdity, was completely vindi-
cated. And so the indications of emotional influence, ar
the proofs of the ineradicability of personality, multiplier
throughout the realm of truth, until the apparently dispas-
sionate procedure of mathematics ceased to seem typical
and became a paradox.^ Thus, throughout the ordinary
range of what mankind esteems as ' truth,' the function
of volition and selection, and the influence of values in
all recognition of validity and reality, have become too
clear to be ignored, and there has resulted the curious
consequence that, by the very process of working out the
claims of faith fairly to their logical conclusion, ' faith '
has ceased to be an adversary of and a substitute for
' reason,' and become an essential ingredient in its
constitution. Reason, therefore, is incapacitated from
systematically contesting the validity of faith, because
faith is proved to be essential to its own validity.

§ 3. The sweeping nature of this change was at first
obscured by the accident that the new philosophy was
first applied in a paper written for a theological audience,
and promulgated as a ' Will-to-believe,' without sufficient
emphasis on the corresponding attitudes of a Will-to-
disbelieve or to play with beliefs, or to suspend belief, or
to allow belief to be imposed by what had already been

^ Cp, Essays ii. , iii., and vi.

- Of course, the discrepant character of mathematical truth as ' self-evident '
and ' independent ' of our arbitrament, is only apparent. It arises mainly from
the ease v ith which its fundamental postulates are made and rendered familiar,
from the general agreement about their sphere of application, from the complete
success of their practical working, and from the obvious coherence of truths
which are tested in whole systems rather than individually. Cp. Hitmanism,
pp. 91, 92 ; and Personal Idealism, pp. ni-17, and 70 n.

2 A ..

354 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvi

accepted as external ' fact.' Thus it was the special
character of the first application that led the less dis-
cerning to overlook the general character of the principle
and the universal scope of the method. But in itself the
new doctrine is perfectly general and impartial in its
application to all cognitive states. It proceeds essentially
from simple observations that, on the one hand, pure
cognition is not an actual process in any human mind,
but at best a fiction for theoretic purposes (of the most
dubious character) ; while, on the other, all actual mental
procedure is thoroughly personal and permeated through
and through with purposes and aims and feelings and
emotions and decisions and selections even in such cases
where these features are ostensibly abstracted from.

Fundamentally, therefore, the new Humanism is
nothing but an attempt to dismiss from psychology
fictions which have been allowed to engender a brood of
logical monsters, which in their turn have tyrannized
over human life, and driven back the healthy human
instinct to experiment, and thereby to know, from what
they perniciously proclaimed forbidden ground. And as
this fundamental position has never directly been im-
pugned, does it not become an easy and inevitable
infeience, that the attitude of the denier, the doubter, and
the believer cannot be discriminated by the ' pureness ' of
the thought, by the test of the presence or absence of
emotion ? If no thought is ever ' pure,' if it is neither
' self-evident * nor true in point of fact that the more
nearly ' pure ' it is the better it is for all purposes, if
emotion, volition, interest, and bias impartially accompany
all cognitive procedures, is it not preposterous to treat
the concrete nature of the mind, the personal interests
which give an impulse to knowledge and a zest to life,
merely as impediments in the search for truth ? What
emotions, etc., must be repressed, to what extent, for
what purposes, depends entirely on the character of the
particular inquiry and of the particular inquirer. Thus,
the anger which leaves one man speechless will add
eloquence and effect to the speeches of another ; and the

XVI FAITH, REASON, AND RELIGION 355

desire to prove a conclusion, which impairs the judgment
of one, will stimulate another to the most ingenious
experiments and the most laborious efforts. It is useless,
therefore, to generalize at random about the cognitive
effect of these psychological influences. They must be
admitted in principle, and evaluated in detail. It must
surely be futile to protest against the normal functioning
of the mind ; it must be rational to recognize influences
which affect us, whether we approve of them or not.
For how can they be estimated and treated rationally,
unless we consent to recognize their potency ? Has it
not then become necessary to examine, patiently and in
detail, how precisely these forces act ; how, when, and to
what extent their influence may be helpful or adverse,
how they may be strengthened and guided and guarded
or controlled and disciplined ? And is it not a strange
irony that impels a purblind rationalism to denounce as
irrational so reasonable an undertaking ?

§ 4. Let us therefore set aside such protests, and pro-
ceed with our inquiry. Like most terms when scrutinized,
neither reason nor faith are conceived with sufficient
precision for our scientific purpose, and it would be hard
to say which of them had been misused in a more flagrant
or question-begging way. Reason to the rationalist has
become a sort of verbal fetish, hedged round with
emotional taboos, which exempt it from all rational
criticism. It is credited with supra-mundane powers of
cognition a priori ; it is sacrosanct itself ; and when its
protecting aegis is cast over any errors or absurdities, it
becomes blasphemy and ' scepticism ' to ask for their
credentials. Hence it is only with the utmost trepidation
that we can dare to ask — What, after all, does reason
mean in actual life ? When, however, we ask this
question, and ponder on the answer, we shall not be
slow to discover that, in the first place, reason is not
reasoning. Reasoning may, of course, enter into the
' rational ' act, but it is by no means indispensable, and
even when it does occur, it only forms a small part of
the total process. Ordinarily instinct, impulse, and habit

356 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvi

account for by far the greater number of our ' rational '
acts. On the other hand, it is not rational to ' reason '
three hours a day about the clothes one is going to put
on ; the reasoning of the victims of such ' abulia,' so far
from being taken as a mark of superior rationality, is
taken as a symptom of a loss of reason.

In the next place, 'reason' is not a faculty. It stands
for a group of habits which men (and to some extent
some animals) have acquired, and which we find extremely
useful, nay necessary, for the successful carrying on of
life. Among these habits may be mentioned that of
inhibiting reaction upon stimulation, i.e. of checking our
natural and instinctive tendencies to act, until we have
reflected what precisely it is we are dealing with. To
determine this latter point, we have developed the habit
of analysis, i.e. of breaking up the confused complex of
presentations into ' things ' and their * attributes,' which
are referred to and ' identified ' with former similar ex-
periences, and expressed in judgments as to what the
situation ' really is.' This enables us to rearrange the
presented connexions of attributions, and the whole
reasoning process finds its natural issue and test in an
action which modifies and beneficially innovates upon the
original habit of reaction.

§ 5. In other words, thinking or judging is one of the
habits that make up man's ' reason,' and thinking or
judging is a highly artificial and arbitrary manipulation
of experience. The ' rational ' connexion of events and
the * rational ' interpretation of experiences are very far
removed from our immediate data, and arrived at only
by complicated processes of thought. Now, thinking
involves essentially the use of concepts, and depends
ultimately upon a number of principles (identity, contra-
diction, etc.), which have long been regarded as funda-
mental ' axioms,' but which reveal themselves as postu-
lates to a voluntarist theory of knowledge which tries to
understand them.

Now, a postulate is not a self-evident ' necessary ' truth
— it ceases to be necessary so soon as the purpose which

XVI FAITH, REASON, AND RELIGION 357

called it into being is renounced. Neither is it a passively
received imprint of experience. It is an assumption,
which no doubt experience has suggested to an actively
inquiring mind, but which is not, and cannot be, proved
until after it has been assumed, and is often assumed
because we desire it, in the teeth of nearly all the apparent
' facts.* It is therefore a product of our volitional activity,
and initially its validity is uncertain. It is established
ex post facto by the experience of its practical success. In
other words, it is validated in just the same way as are
the other habits that make up our ' reason.' In so far as,
therefore, reasoning rests on postulates, and postulates are
unproved and open to doubt at the outset, our attitude in
adhering to them implies ' faith,' i.e. a belief in a * verifica-
tion ' yet to come. Must we not say, then, that at the
very roots of ' reason ' we must recognize an element of
' faith ' ? And similarly it would seem that as the funda-
mental truths of the sciences are attained in the same
way, they all must presuppose faith, in a twofold manner —
(i) as making use of reasoning, and (2) as resting upon
the specific postulates of each science,

§ 6. That the principle of faith is commonly conceived
very variably and with great vagueness has already been
admitted, though its critics seem unfairly to incline
towards the schoolboy's definition that it is ' believing a
thing when you know it's not true.' Even this definition
would not be wholly indefensible, if it were only written
' believing when you know it's not true^ and if thereby
proper attention were drawn to the fact that a belief
sustained by faith still stands in need of verification to
become fully * true.' On the whole, however, it would
seem preferable to define it as the mental attitude which,
for purposes of action, is willing to take upon trust
valuable and desirable beliefs, before they have been proved
' true,' but in the hope that this attitude may promote
their verification. About this definition it is to be noted
(i) that it renders faith pre-eminently an attitude of will,
an affair of the whole personality and not of the (abstract)
intellect ; (2) that it is expressly concerned with values,

358 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvi

and that the worthless and unimportant is not fitted to
evoke our faith ; (3) that it involves risk, real stakes, and
serious dangers, and is emphatically not a game that can
be played in a casual and half-hearted way ; (4) that a
reference to verification is essential to it, and that there-
fore it is as little to be identified with, as to be divorced
from, knowledge. Now, verification must come about by
the results of its practical working, by presuming the
' truth ' of our faith and by acting on its postulates ;
whence it would appear that those theologians were right
who contended that real faith must justify itself by works.
On the other hand, we might anticipate that spurious
forms of faith would fall short in one or more of these
respects, and so account for the confusion into which the
subject has drifted.

§ 7. Such, then, being the nature of the faith which is
said to envelop and sustain reason, and to engender
knowledge, can it be fairly charged with forming a
principle of unbridled individualism which abrogates all
distinctions between subjective fancy and objective reality?
Nothing surely could be further from the truth. At first,
no doubt, it looks as though to recognize the psychological
necessity and logical value of the will to believe opened
the door to a limitless host of individual postulates. But
the freedom to believe what we will is so checked by the
consciousness of the responsibility and risk attaching to
our choice, that this part of the doctrine becomes little
more than a device for securing an open field and a fair
trial to every relevant possibility. Furthermore, all such
subjective preferences have to submit to a severe sifting
in consequence of the requirement that our postulates
must stand the test of practical working, before their
claim to truth can be admitted. Whatever our faith, it
must be confirmed by works, and so prove itself to be
objectively valid.

Alike, therefore, whether it is applied to knowledge or
to faith, the pragmatic test is a severe one. It allows,
indeed, the widest liberty to experiment ; but it inexorably
judges such experiments by the value of their actual

XVI FAITH, REASON, AND RELIGION 359

achievements, and sternly withholds its sanction from
insincere phrasemongering, from ineffectual aspiration,
from unworkable conceptions, from verbal quibblings and
dead formulas. Throughout the intellectual world the
pedantry of the past has heaped up so much rubbish
which the application of this pragmatic test would clear
away, that it is not always easy to repress a suspicion
that much of the philosophic alarm at the consequences
of applying our test may have been inspired, more or
less unconsciously, by an unavowed dread lest it should
insist on pensioning off some of the more effete veterans
among philosophic traditions.

For really the pragmatic value of much that passes for
philosophy is by no means easy to discern. Metaphysical
systems, for instance, hardly ever seem to possess more
than individual value. They satisfy their inventors, and
afford congenial occupation to their critics. But they
have hitherto shown no capacity to achieve a more general
validity or to intervene effectively in the conduct of life.
Again, it is inevitable that the pragmatic inquiry as to
what difference their truth or falsehood can be supposed
to make should be raised concerning many metaphysical
propositions, such as that the universe is * one ' or ' perfect,'
or that truth is * eternal,' or that ' substance ' is immutable,
which, in so far as they are not taken as merely verbal
(and this is all they usually profess to be when criticized),
seem only very distantly and doubtfully connected with
life. Their prestige, therefore, is seriously imperilled.

Now, similar dogmas abound in religion, and are not
wholly absent even from the sciences. But their occur-
rence is outbalanced by that of assertions which carry
practical consequences in the most direct and vital way.
Hence the pragmatic importance and value of science and
religion can hardly be contested. And as tested by their
material results in the one case and by their spiritual
results in the other, they both indisputably ' work.' It is
inevitable, therefore, that we should regard them as resting
on conceptions which are broadly ' true,' or ' true ' at all
events until superseded by something truer. They have

36o STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvi

nothing, consequently, to fear from our method of criticism :
if anything, its application may be expected to invigorate
their pursuit, and to relieve them of the burden of non-
functional superfluities with which an officious formalism
has encumbered them.

Selection, then, of the valuable among a plurality of
alternatives is essential to the life and progress of religious,
as of secular, truth. Truth is not merely ' what each man
troweth,' but (in its fulness) also what has stood its tests
and justified our trust.

§ 8. But experience would seem to show that (at least
while the winnowing process is still going on) the results
of this testing are not so decisive as to eliminate all the
competitors but one. Over an extensive range of subjects
the most various opinions appear tenable, and are success-
fully maintained. But why should this astonish us?
For (i) what right have we to expect final results from
an incomplete process ? (2) What right have we to assume
that even ultimate ' truth ' must be one and the same
for all ? The assumption is no doubt convenient, and in
a rough and ready way it works ; but does it do full
justice to the variety of men and things ? Is the ' same-
ness' we assume ever really more than agreement for
practical purposes, and do we ever really crave for more
than this ? And provided we achieve this, why should
not the ' truth,' too, prove more subtly flexible, and
adjust itself to the differences of individual experience,
and result in an agreement to differ and to respect our
various idiosyncrasies? (3) It is difficult to see why a
phenomenon, which is common in the sciences and normal
in philosophy, without exciting indignation, should be
regarded as inadmissible in the religious sphere. It is a
normal feature in the progress of a science that its * facts '
should be established by engendering a multitude of
interpretations, none of which are capable, usually, of
covering them completely, and none so clearly ' false ' as
to be dismissible without a qualm. Why, then, should
we be alarmed to find that the growth of religious truth
proceeds with an analogous exuberance ? (4) Anyhow,

XVI FAITH, REASON, AND RELIGION 361

whether we like or disHke the human habit of entertain-
ing divergent beliefs, the plurality of the opinions which
are held to be ' true ' is an important fact, and forms one
of the data which no adequate theory of knowledge can
afford to overlook.

§ 9. It is useless, therefore, to close our eyes to the
fact that faith is essentially a personal affair, an adventure,
if you please, which originates in individual options, in
choices on which men set their hearts and stake their
lives. If these assumptions prosper, and if so by faith we
live, then it may come about that by faith we may also
know. For it is the essential basis of the cognitive
procedure in science no less than in religion that we must
start from assumptions which we have not proved, which
we cannot prove, and which can only be ' verified ' after
we have trusted them and pledged ourselves to look upon
the facts with eyes which our beliefs have fortunately
biassed. Of this procedure the belief in a causal con-
nexion of events, the belief which all natural science pre-
supposes and works on, is perhaps the simplest example.
For no evidence will go to prove it in the least degree
until the belief has boldly been assumed. Moreover, as
we have argued (in Essays ii., iii., and vi.), to abstract from
the personal side of knowing is really impossible. Science
also, properly understood, does not depersonalize herself.
She too takes risks and ventures herself on postulates,
hypotheses, and analogies, which seem wild, until they
are tamed to our service and confirmed in their allegiance.
She too must end by saying Credo ut intelligain. And
she does this because she must. For, as Prof. Dewey
has admirably shown,^ all values and meanings rest upon
beliefs, and " we cannot preserve significance and decline
the personal attitude in which it is inscribed and operative."
And the failure of intfellectualist philosophy to justify
science and to understand ' how knowledge is possible,' we
have seen to be merely the involuntary consequence of its
mistaken refusal to admit the reality and necessity of faith.

^ In his important paper on ' Beliefs and P2xistences ' in The hifltience of
Darwifi on Philosophy.

362 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvi

I find it hard, therefore, to understand why a religious
assumption, such as, e.g., the existence of a ' God,' should
require a different and austerer mode of proof, or why the
theologian should be debarred from a procedure which is
always reputable, and sometimes heroic, in a man of
science.

We start, then, always from the postulates of faith,
and transmute them, slowly, into the axioms of reason.
The presuppositions of scientific knowledge and religious
faith are the same. So, too, is the mode of verification
by experience. The assumptions which work, i.e. which
approve themselves by ministering to human interests,
purposes, and objects of desire, are ' verified ' and accepted
as ' true.' So far there is no difference. But we now
come to the most difficult part of our inquiry, viz., that of
applying our general doctrine to the religious sphere, and
of accounting for the different complexion of science and
religion. For that there exists a marked difference here
will hardly be denied, nor that it (if anything) will account
for the current antithesis of faith and reason. It must be,
in other words, a difference in the treatment of the same
principles which produces the difference in the results.

§ lO. Now, it is fairly easy to see that certain differ-
ences in treatment are necessarily conditioned by differ-
ences in the subjects in which the verification of our
postulates takes place. In ordinary life we deal directly
with an ' external world ' perceived through the senses ; in
science with the same a little less directly : in either case
our hypotheses appeal to some overt, visible, and palpable
fact, by the observation of which they are adequately
verified. But the data of the religious consciousness are
mainly experiences of a more inward, spiritual, personal
sort, and it is obvious that they can hardly receive the same
sort of verification. The religious postulates can hardly
be verified by a direct appeal to sense, we think ; and
even if theophanies occurred, they would not nowadays
be regarded as adequate proofs of the existence of
God.

But this difference at once gives rise to a difficulty.

XVI FAITH, REASON, AND RELIGION 363

The opinion of the great majority of mankind is still so
instinctively averse from introspection, that it is not yet
willing to treat the psychical facts of inward experience
as facts just as rightfully and in as real a way as the
observations of the senses. It does not recognize the
reality and power of beliefs. It does not see that " beliefs
are themselves real without discount," " as metaphysically
real as anything else can ever be," and that " belief, sheer,
direct, unmitigated, personal belief," can act on reality
" by modifying and shaping the reality of other real
things." ^ And because it has not understood the reality
of beliefs as integral constituents of the world of human
experience, and their potency as the motive forces which
transform it, it has disabled itself from really understand-
ing our world.

But it has disabled itself more seriously from under-
standing the dynamics of the religious consciousness.
It rules out as irrelevant a large and essential part of the
evidence on which the religious consciousness has every-
where instinctively relied. It hesitates to admit the his-
toric testimony to the ' truth ' of a religious synthesis which
comes from the experience of its working through the
ages, even though it may not, like the old rationalism,
dismiss it outright as unworthy of consideration. It
suspects or disallows many of the verifications to
which the religious consciousness appeals. And this is
manifestly quite unfair. The psychological evidence is
relevant, because in the end there is a psychological side
to all evidence, which has been overlooked. The historical
appeal is relevant, because in the end all evidence is
historical, and the truth of science also rests on the record
of its services. The controversy, therefore, about the
logical value of religious experience will have henceforth
to be conducted with considerably expanded notions of
what evidence is relevant. Nor must we be more severe
on religion than on science. But it is plain that we are.
We ought not to be more suspicious of the religious than of
the many scientific theories which are not capable of direct

1 Prof. Dewey in I.e. pp. 192, 188, 187.

364 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvi

verification by sense-perception. But even though the
ether, e.g., is an assumption which no perception can ever
verify, it is yet, in scientific theory, rendered so continuous
with what is capable of perceptual verification that the
discrepancy is hardly noticed. The system of religious
truths is much less closely knit ; the connexion of the
postulates with our spiritual needs and their fulfilling
experiences is much less obvious ; the methods and
possibilities of spiritual experiment are much less clearly
ascertained.

The reason, no doubt, partly is that in the religious
sphere the conceptions for which the support of faith is
invoked are much more vaguely outlined. It would be a
matter of no slight difficulty to define the conception of
religion itself, so as to include everything that was
essential, and to exclude everything that was not. And
it would not be hard to show that at the very core of the
religious sentiment there linger survivals of the fears and
terrors with which primitive man was inspired by the
spectacle of an uncomprehended universe.

Again, consider so central a conception of religion as,
e.g., ' God.' It is so vaguely and ambiguously conceived
that within the same religion, nay, within the same Church,
the word may stand for anything, from the cosmic
principle of the most vaporous pantheism to a near
neighbour of the most anthropomorphic polytheism.
And it is obvious that while this is so, no completely
coherent or ' rational ' account can be given of a term
whose meanings extend over almost the whole gamut of
philosophic possibilities. But it is also obvious that there
is no intrinsic reason for this state of things, and that
theologians could, if they wished, assign one sufficiently
definite meaning to the word, and then devise other terms
as vehicles for the other meanings. It may be noted, as
a happy foretaste of such a more reasonable procedure,
that already philosophers of various schools are beginning
to distinguish between the conceptions of ' God ' and of
' the Absolute,' though it is clear to me that the latter
' conception ' is still too vague and will in its turn have

XVI FAITH, REASON, AND RELIGION 365

to be either abolished or relegated to a merely honorary
position.

§ II. It must be admitted, thirdly, that a widespread
distrust of faith has been, not unnaturally, provoked by
the extensive misuse of the principle in its religious
signification. Faith has become the generic term for
whatever religious phenomena co-existed with an absence
of knowledge. Under this heading we may notice
the following spurious forms of faith: — (i) Faith may
become a euphemism for unwillingness to think, or, at
any rate, for absence of thought. In this sense faith is
the favourite offspring of intellectual indolence. It is
chiefly cherished as the source of a comfortable feeling
that everything is all right, and that we need not trouble
our heads about it further. If we ' have faith ' of this
kind, no further exertion is needed to sustain our spiritual
life ; it is the easiest and cheapest way of limiting and
shutting off the spiritual perspective. (2) It is not un-
common to prefer faith to knowledge because of its
uncertainty. The certainty about matters of knowledge
is cold and cramping : the possibilities of faith are
gloriously elastic. (3) Our fears for the future, our
cowardly shrinkings from the responsibilities and labours
of too great a destiny, nay, our very despair of knowledge
itself, may all assume the garb of faith, and masquerade
as such. (4) ' Faith ' may mean merely a disingenuous
disavowal of a failure to know, enabling us to retain
dishonestly what we have not known (or sought) to gain
by valid means. To all these spurious forms of faith, of
course, our Humanism can furnish no support, though it
is alert to note the important part they play (and
especially the first) throughout our mental life.

The fifth form of faith is not so much fraudulent as
incomplete ; its fallacy consists in allowing itself to be
stopped short of works, and to renounce the search
for verification. This is the special temptation of the
robuster forms of faith : if our faith is very strong it
produces an assurance to which, psychologically, no more
could be added. Why, then, demand knowledge as

366 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvi

well ? Does not this evince an unworthy distrust of faith
at the very time when faith has shown its power ? To
which it may be replied that we also can and must
distinguish psychological assurance from logical proof,
even though the latter must induce the former, and the
former must lay claim to logical value as it grows more
nearly universal. The difference lies in the greater psycho-
logical communicability of the ' logical ' assurances and their
wider range of influence. At first sight emotional exhor-
tations (sermons, etc.) may seem to produce far intenser and
more assured beliefs than calmer reasonings. But they do
not appeal so widely nor last so well, and even though it
is hazardous to assume that ' logical ' cogency is universal,^
it is certainly, on the whole, of greater pragmatic value.

Moreover, the motives of an unreasoning faith are
easily misread ; the faith which is strong enough to feel
no need of further proof is interpreted as too weak to
dare to aspire to it. And so a properly enlightened faith
should yield the strongest impetus to knowledge : the
stronger it feels itself to be, the more boldly and eagerly
should it seek, the more confidently should it anticipate,
the more probably should it attain, the verificatory
experiences that recompense its efforts.

§ 12. It must be admitted for these reasons that the
mistaken uses of the principle of faith have retarded the
intellectual development of the religious view of life. It
has lagged so far behind the scientific in its formal
development that theologians might often with advantage
take lessons from the scientists in the proper use of faith.
But intrinsically the religious postulates are not in-
susceptible of verification, nor are religious ' evidences '
incapable of standing the pragmatic test of truth. And
some verification in some respects many of these postulates
and much of this evidence may, of course, be fairly said
to have received. The question how far such verification
has gone is, in strict logic, the question as to the sphere
of religious ' truth.' The question as to how much further
verification should be carried, and with what prospects, is

1 Cp. Essay xii. § 8,

XVI FAITH, REASON, AND RELIGION 367

strictly the question of the sphere of the claims to truth
which rest as yet only upon faith.

§ 1 3. To attempt to determine with scientific precision
what amount of established truth must be conceded to
religion as it stands, and what claims to truth should be
regarded as reasonable and valuable, and what not, is
a task which probably exceeds the powers, as it certainly
transcends the functions, of the mere philosopher. It would
in any case be fantastic, and probably illusory, to expect
any philosophy to deduce a priori d^nd in so many words the
special doctrines of any religion which bases its claims
on historic revelation, and may, by its working, be able
to establish them. For what would be the need and the
use of revelation if it added nothing to what we
might have discovered for ourselves ? Moreover, in the
present condition of the religious evidence, any attempt
to evaluate it could only claim subjective and personal
interest. No two philosophers probably would evaluate
it just in the same way and with the same results.

It seems better, therefore, to make only very general
observations, and to draw only general conclusions. As
regards the general psychology of religion, it is clear
(i) that all our human methods of grasping and remould-
ing our experience are fundamentally one. (2) It is
clear that the religious attitude towards the facts, or
seeming facts, of life is in general valid. (3) It is clear
that this attitude has imperishable foundations in the
psychological nature of the human soul. (4) It is clear
that the pragmatic method is able to discriminate rigorously
between valid and invalid uses of faith, and offers sufficient
guarantees, on the one hand, against the wanderings of in-
dividual caprice, and, on the other, against the narrowness
of a doctrinairism which would confine our postulates to a
single type — those of the order falsely called ' mechanical.' ^

^ Strictly interpreted, the word confirms the Humanist position which it is
so often used to exclude. For a ' mechanism ' is, properly, a device — a means
to effect a purpose. And, in point of fact, it is as a means to ordering our
experience that ' mechanical ' conceptions are in use. To abstract from this
teleological function of all ' mechanism ' therefore, is to falsify the metaphor : a
device of nobody's, for no purpose, is a means that has no meaning.

368 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvi

It can show that it is not ' faith ' to despise the work of
' reason,' nor ' reason ' to decline the aid of ' faith ' ; and
that the field of experience is so wide and rough that
we need never be ashamed to import religion into its
cultivation in order to perfect the fruits of human life.

As regards the concrete religions themselves, it is clear
(i) that all religions may profit by the more sympathetic
attitude of Humanism towards the religious endowment
of human nature, and so towards their evidences and
methods. And this for them is a gain not to be despised.
For it invalidates the current rationalistic attacks, and
secures religions against the ordinary ' dialectical ' refuta-
tions. It gives them, moreover, a chance of proving their
truth in their own appropriate way. It is clear (2) that
all religions work pragmatically to a greater or less
extent. And this in spite of what seem, theoretically,
the greatest difficulties. The obvious explanation is that
these ' theoretical ' difficulties are really unimportant,
because they are either non-functional or pragmatically
equivalents, and that the really functional parts of all
religions will be found to be practically identical. It
follows (3) that all religions will be greatly benefited and
strengthened by getting rid of their non - functional
accretions and appendages. These constitute what may,
perhaps, without grave injustice be called the theological
side of religion ; and it nearly always does more harm
than good. For even where ' theological ' systems are
not merely products of professional pedantry, and their
* rationality ' is not illusory, they absorb too much energy
better devoted to the more truly religious functions. The
most striking and familiar illustration of this is afforded
by our own Christianity, an essentially human and
thoroughly pragmatic religion, hampered throughout its
history, and at times almost strangled, by an alien
theology, based on the intellectualistic speculations of
Greek philosophers. Fortunately the Greek metaphysic
embodied (mainly) in the ' Athanasian ' creed is too
obscure to have ever been really functional ; its chief
mischief has always been to give theological support to

XVI FAITH, REASON, AND RELIGION 369

* philosophic ' criticisms, which, by identifying God with
' the One,' have aimed at eliminating the human element
from the Christian rehgion.^ As against all such attempts,
however, we must hold fast to the principle that the
truest religion is that which issues in and fosters the
best life.

^ Cp. Prof. Dewey, I.e. pp. 178-80.

XVII
THE PROGRESS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH^

ARGUMENT

§ I. The impotence of ' facts ' to resist interpretations prompted by bias.
The attempts to interpret ' psychical phenomena ' systematically. § 2.
The work of Frederic Myers. § 3. The conception of the Subliminal.
§ 4. Myers's use of it to transcend terrestrial existence. § 5- The
argument of his Hutnan Pe7-sonality. § 6. Current criticisms of it.
§ 7. Replies to these. § 8. The ' proof ' of immortality. § 9. The
need for organized and endowed inquiry.

§ I. It is a popular superstition that the advancement of
truth depends wholly on the discovery of facts, and that
the sciences have an insatiable appetite for facts and
consume them raw, like oysters ; whereas, really, the
actual procedure of the sciences is almost the exact
opposite of this. For the facts to be ' discovered ' there
is needed the eye to see them, and inasmuch as the most
important facts do not at first obtrude themselves, it has
usually to be a trained eye, and animated by a per-
severing desire to know. Radium, for example, with the
revolution in our whole conception of material nature
which it imports, after vainly bombarding an inattentive
universe for aeons, has only just succeeded in getting itself
discovered, and its wonderful activity appreciated and
ranked as ' fact.'

Again, the sciences are anything but heaps of crude
facts. They are coherent systems of the interpretation of
what they have taken as ' fact,' and they, very largely, make
their own facts as they proceed. Nor are ' facts ' facts for

^ This essay appeared in the Fortnightly Review for January 1905. It is
reprinted by the courtesy of the editor, with a few additions towards the end.

370

XVII PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 371

a science until it has prepared them for assimilation,
and can swallow them without unduly straining its
structure. In other words, the sciences always select
and 'cook' their facts. 'Fact' is not only 'made,'
but always ' faked ' to some extent. Hence what is
fact for one science, and from one point of view, is not
so for and from another, and may be irrelevant or a
fiction. If, therefore, rival theorists are determined to
occupy different points of view, and to stay there without
seeking common ground, they can controvert each other's
' facts ' for ever. For their assertions concern what are
really different facts. So there is no way of settling the dis-
pute save by the good old method of letting both continue
until harvest-time, and finding which contributes more to
human welfare. Facts, in short, are far from being rigid,
irresistible, triumphant forces of nature ; rather they are
artificial products of our selection, of our interests, of our
hopes, of our fears. The shape they assume depends on
our point of view, their meaning on our purpose, their
value on the use we put them to ; nay, perhaps, their
very reality on our willingness to accept them. For if
there lurks within them some backbone of rigidity which
we cannot hope to alter, it is at least something to which
we have not yet penetrated, and which it would be fatal
rashly to assume, so long as the facts that face us are still
such that we wa^it to alter them.

Now most of this has long been known to the
logicians, though for various reasons they have not yet
thought fit to make it clear to the uninitiated public. Nor
should I now dare to divulge these mysteries of the higher
logic were it possible to discuss the history of Psychical
Research without reference to the striking way in which
it illustrates this, our human, treatment of fact. This
history has been a tragedy (or tragi-comedy) with three
main actors. Fact, Prejudice or Bias, and Interpretation ;
and the greatest of these is Prejudice. For it has deter-
mined the interpretation, which in turn has selected
the facts. Thus the impotence of Fact has been most
clearly shown. For of facts bearing on the subject there

372 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvii

has always been abundance : mankind has always had
experience of ghosts, trances, inspirations, dreams, fancies,
illusions, hallucinations, and the like. Some men have
always been ill-balanced, as others stolid, some responsive
to the unusual, as others indifferent. And divergent
prejudices have always been strong to emphasize what-
ever told in their favour, and to suppress whatever did
not. So ' what the facts really were ' has manifestly
depended on the interpretations put upon them.

Of such interpretations the two extremes have always
been conspicuous. The one is often called the super-
stitious and the other the scientific. The names indeed
are bad, and beg the question ; for any interpretation has
a right to be called scientific if it is coherent and works,
while any is superstitious which rests on mere prejudice
and can give no coherent account of itself. But still, the
interpretation which treats all psychic phenomena as
essentially pathological has hitherto been preferred by
the more scientific people, and has therefore been worked
out and applied more scientifically, while hardly anything
has been done to elicit the latent scientific value of its
rival.

Since the formation of the Society for Psychical
Research, however, this situation has been changed, and
its work has begun to tell both on the facts and on their
interpretation. Not that as yet much progress has been
made in altering the mode in which the facts appear, i.e.
in obtaining control of them, in making them experi-
mental, or in eliciting new ones. But the quality of the
old facts has been greatly improved ; they are beginning
to be received with a more discriminating hospitality, to
be scrutinized with a more intelligent curiosity, to be
recorded with something like precision. And what, in
the light of their past history, is probably quite as im-
portant— for what is the use of collecting facts which no
one understands ? — much has been done to render their
interpretation more scientific, and it is upon this aspect
of the progress of Psychical Research that we may
enlarge.

XVII PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 373

The better understanding of the traditional phenomena
has been greatly advanced by a series of notable books
proceeding from the inner circles of the Society for
Psychical Research. First to be mentioned is William
James's profound and delightful Varieties of Religious
Experience^ which has so signally shown the psychological
significance of much that from the pathological point of
view would seem sheer excesses of spiritual morbidity.
Secondly, Frank Podmore's History of Modern Spiritualism
has shown how the ' facts ' look to an intelligent, com-
petent, but intensely sceptical, critic. Lastly, Frederic
Myers's Huma?i Personality has made a brilliant and
suggestive effort to look at the same material with a
constructive purpose, and to put upon it a coherent
interpretation which will convert the whilom playground
of the will-o'-the-wisps of superstition into a stable habita-
tion of science. This enterprise seems important enough
to warrant an attempt to estimate its outcome, now that
the first rush of readers and the first clash of critics has
rolled by.

Myers's conception of the function of the Society
for Psychical Research differs widely from Podmore's :
it is for him not an organization for the harrying
of spiritual impostors, but a possible training school for
the future Columbus of an ultra-terrestrial world. And
so he is inspired by the spirit of research, nay, of
adventure, which is the prelude to discovery.

§ 2. Perhaps, however, the first reflection he provokes is
one on the waywardness of genius, on its annoying habit
of not sticking to its last, and ?wt allowing quiet folk to
drowse on in their old ancestral ways, but of making un-
expected incursions into fresh territories and dragging an
unwilling humanity in its train. For there can be little
doubt that Myers was a genius, though not at all of
the kind that would (antecedently) have been suspected
of attempting epoch-making contributions to science and
philosophy. His gifts were clearly of a literary and
poetic character, such as seemed to promise him a dis-
tinguished place and an agreeable career among the

374 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xva

English men of letters, but might, in the first instance,
well be thought to have unfitted him for the close
reasoning and laborious experimenting that are needed
by the man of science. But a strong passion of his
emotional nature turned his powers in quite a different
direction. A wicked fairy (I suppose) afflicted him with
a well-nigh unique and unequalled longing to know, before
he trod it, the path all souls must travel ; and this desire
formed the tragedy and glory of his life. It is usual to
suppose that a passionate desire is a mere hindrance in
the search for truth ; but a more observant psychology
must acknowledge what strength, what perseverance, and
what daring it may bestow upon the searcher. Of this
power, Myers's case affords a signal example ; for by dint
of his desire to know he transformed himself He turned
himself into a man of science, keenly watchful and
thoroughly cognizant of every scientific fact that seemed
to bear, however remotely, on his central interest, and
though, I think, he never quite secured his footing on the
tight - ropes of technical philosophy, he made himself
sufficiently acquainted with the abstruser mysteries of
metaphysics. And so he actually trained his Pegasus, as
it were, to pull the ark of the covenanted immortality out
of the slough of naturalism.

It then appeared to the marvel of most beholders
that there is work for the imagination to accomplish in
science no less than in poetry. It was the poetry in
Myers that enabled him to grasp at great conceptions,
whose light could not have dawned on duller souls, and
to build up out of the rubbish heaps of uncomprehended
and unutilized experience the impressive structure which,
if it be not the temple of ultimate truth, yet for the
present marks the ' furthest north ' of scientific striving
towards one of the great poles of human interest. And,
similarly, it was his desire that gave him driving-power.
For twenty years he laboured unremittingly himself, and
enlisted by his enthusiasm the co-operation of others.
Like other pioneers, those of psychical research will never,
probably, obtain the recognition due to their courage,

xvn PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 375

endurance, and faith in an undertaking which not only
their social surroundings, but their own misgivings, pro-
nounced futile and absurd. It was mainly due to Myers's
tact and enthusiasm that the Society was nerved to
persist in the tedious task of observing and collecting the
erratic bits of evidence, the perplexing phantasmagoria of
experiences, which he has now so brilliantly fitted together
into his fascinating picture of the subliminal extent and
transcendent destiny of the human spirit. True, the
picture is impressionist : in some parts it is sketchy ; in
others its completion was cut short by death ; nowhere
perhaps will it bear a pedantically microscopic scrutiny.
But it is the picture of a master none the less, and
takes the place of a mere smear of meaningless detail
and shadowy outline. Wherefore it is an achievement,
and its scientific value is incontestable, whether or not we
are willing to accept it as a real image of the truth.

§ 3. Accordingly, it is no wonder that, whereas those
who applied strictly technical standards, and looked for
what it is vain to expect, and difficult to use, in an in-
choate science, viz. a formal precision of spick and span
conceptions, have been somewhat disconcerted by the
heuristic and tentative plasticity of Myers's terms, the
greatest of psychologists, William James, himself no
mean adept in psychical researches, should thus testify to
his suggestiveness. " I cannot but think," he says,^ " that
the most important step forward that has occurred in
psychology since I have been a student of the science, is
the discovery, first made in 1886, that in certain subjects
at least there is not only the consciousness of the ordinary
field, with its usual centre and margin, but an addition
thereto in the shape of a set of memories, thoughts, and
feelings, which are extra-marginal and outside of the
primary consciousness altogether, but yet must be classed
as conscious facts of some sort, able to reveal their
presence by unmistakable signs." This then is * the
problem of Myers,' the great question as to the nature

1 Varieties of Religio7ts Experience, p. 233. Cp. also his fuller appreciation
of Myers's work in the Proceedings of the S. P. R., Part 42, pp. 13-23.

376 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvn

of the subconscious or subliminal extension of what we
may, perhaps, still call the self

To Myers this conception of the Subliminal Self is
the great clue that guides him through the labyrinth of
abnormal and supernormal fact, and holds together phe-
nomena so various as sleep, dream, memory, hypnotism,
hysteria, genius, insanity (largely), automatisms, chromatic
hearing, hallucinations, ghosts, telepathy and telergy,
clairvoyance and the like, and even ' ectoplasy.' It is
essential then for an appreciation of Human Personality
to grasp this great conception of the Subliminal Self, and
the considerations which conduct to it.

Psychological experiment has confirmed what the best
philosophic speculation had previously suspected, viz. that
the world of sense is limited. That is, there exist limits
beyond which any particular sense-perception either ceases
or is transformed. It is only within a limited range that
disturbances in the air are perceived as sounds, and in the
' ether ' as sights. There are ultra-violet ' rays,' and
infra-red ' rays,' which are both invisible, and there are
' tones ' too high and too low to be heard. There are
limits of intensity also to sensation. A very slight
stimulation is not felt ; e.g. a small fly crawling across
the hand arouses no sensation. Yet we cannot say
that this crawling passes quite unnoticed. For, if there
are half-a-dozen such flies, we feel them collectively. But
does not this imply that each separately must have con-
tributed something ? For six ciphers would add up to
nothing. In this way, then, we form the notion of a
limen or ' threshold ' over which a ' sensation ' must
pass to enter consciousness. This threshold is not, how-
ever, a fixed point : it may be shifted up and down, raised
so as to contract, or lowered^ so as to enlarge, the range of
consciousness, to an unknown extent, according to the
variations of attention, mental condition, etc. At present
the range of variation in the limen is almost unexplored ;
but it is undeniable that both the hyper-aesthesia which
results from a lowering, and the abnormal concentration,
or ' abstraction,' which results from a raising, and still

xvn PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 377

more from a combination of the two (as in some hypnotic
states), may easily lead to abnormalities that would hitherto
have been accounted miracles.

It should be noted, furthermore, that we cannot evade
the paradox of unfelt ' sensations ' by interpreting the
limen in terms of physiology. At first sight it seems easy
enough to assume that there is nothing mental out of
consciousness, and to explain that the bodily disturbances
(due to the crawling flies) have to attain a certain magni-
tude before the mind reacts upon them. We may suppose,
that is, that it is not worthy of the mind to take note of
the nervous excitation due to the crawling of a single fly.
But this only transfers the difficulty from the sense organs
to the central brain : it still remains a fact that a mind
which responds to a sum of slight disturbances in the brain
must, in summing them, have apprehended them sublimi-
nally in their separation. Nay, in the end must not this
weird power of unnoticed noticing be ascribed to * matter '
generally ? For how could anything ever respond to a
sum of stimulations if the constituents of the sum had
not been somehow noticed ? It would seem, then, that
from this notion of the subliminal there is no escape.

§ 4. But instead of being a nuisance and a paradox, it
may be made into a principle of far-reaching explanation.
This is what Myers has done. He has extended this
scientific notion of subliminal ' perception ' from the
parts to the whole, and instead of recognizing it grudg-
ingly and piecemeal, he gladly generalizes it into a
principle of almost universal application. When this is
done, the supraliminal and the subliminal seem to change
places in our estimation, and our normal supraliminal
consciousness shrinks into a mere selection of the total
self, which the necessities of mortal life have stirred us to
condense into actual consciousness, while behind it, em-
bracing and sustaining all, there stretches a vast domain
of the subliminal whose unexplored possibilities may be
fraught with weal or woe ineffable. Who after this will
question the potency of the poetic seer to evolve romance
out of the disjointed data of academic science? And

378 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvn

yet, like all great feats, it is like the egg of Columbus
and very simple. At bottom it is only a shifting of
standpoint, a throwing of our spirit's centre of gravity
over into the subliminal. Let us for a moment cease to
regard as the true centres of our being the conscious
persons of a definite kind, hedged in by social restrictions
and psychical and physical incapacities of all sorts, which
we appear to be, and whom, in spite of philosophic warn-
ings, we assume ourselves to know so well : let us regard
them as mere efficient, though imperfect, concentrations
of our being upon the practical purposes of normal life.
And then, hey presto ! the thing is done ! We return
transfigured to the surface from our dive into the sub-
liminal. We are greater, perhaps more glorious, than our
wildest dreams suspected. We have transcended the
limits of terrestrial being, and flung aside the menace of
materialism. Or, in more technical philosophic language,
which it is a pity Myers did not in this instance use, we
find ourselves contemplating the correlation of physical
and psychical from the point of view of the transmission,
not of the production, theory of the latter.^ Psychic life,
that is, is not engendered by the phantom dance of
' atoms,' but conversely, its veritable nature pierces in
varying degrees the distorting veil of ' matter ' that seems
so solid, and yet, under scientific scrutiny, so soon dis-
solves into the fantastic fictions of ' vortex-rings ' or
ethereal ' voids ' and ' stresses,' or * energy ' equations.
And the beauty of this change of attitude is that whereas
no facts can be discovered which will invalidate this rein-
terpretation, it is quite possible that new discoveries may
make its materialistic rival simply unworkable.

Myers has two great similes for illustrating what he
conceives to be the relation of the conscious to the sub-
conscious personality. It is like unto the visible portion
of an iceberg of whose total mass eight-ninths float
beneath the surface. Or it is like the visible spectrum
beyond which there extend at either end infra-red and
ultra-violet rays, to say nothing of yet more mysterious

^ Cp. James's Human Immortality.

XVII PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 379

modes of radiation, as potent, or more potent, than those
our eyes enable us to see. The latter image has indeed
this further advantage, that close inspection will reveal
dark lines and discontinuities even within the narrow
band of visible light. Just so there are abundant breaks
of continuity in our conscious life, which may be made
to spell out messages to the psychologist from the
hidden depths of the soul, much as the dark lines in a
stellar spectrum reveal to the astronomer the composition
of far-distant stars. And he believes that in the super-
normal phenomena of which his book supplies a pro-
visional codification, we have something corresponding to
the ' enhanced ' lines of spectroscopy.

§ 5. Hence it is natural enough that Myers should begin
his survey by tracing the subliminal support in the normal
operations of our consciousness. Morbid disintegrations
of personality prove that at least we are not rounded-ofif
and self-complete souls, which must be in their integrity,
or not be at all. And yet not all the features of such
cases look like mere decay ; they are interspersed with
signs of a complete memory and of supernormal faculty,
and of connexions deep below the surface. The analysis
of genius is next attempted, in perhaps the least con-
vincing chapter in the book, which derives genius from
* subliminal uprushes.' In the fourth chapter sleep is
dealt with, and considered as a differentiation of psychic
life parallel with waking life, preserving a more antique
complexion, and showing (in dreams) symptoms of a
closer connexion with and access to the subliminal.
Chapter V. deals with the extension of normal into
hypnotic sleep, and the enhanced control of the organism
which it often carries with it. In these first chapters the
facts to which Myers so copiously appeals throughout
are, on the whole, beyond dispute, though there still is
abundant difference of opinion about their interpretation.
But in the sixth chapter he approaches a region in which
the ordinary man and ordinary science evince a stubborn
unwillingness to admit, and even to ascertain, the facts.
Starting with an ingenious suggestion that syiKzsthesice,

38o STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvn

like * coloured hearing,' are vestiges of a primitive sensi-
tivity not yet definitely attached to special organs of
sense, he proceeds to other forms of sensory automatism,
which convey messages from the subliminal to the con-
scious self. These may take the form of spontaneous
hallucinations, or be experimentally induced by 'crystal-
gazing,' and often reveal telepathic influence.

Of telepathy^ Myers is not long content to retain
the provisional description, officially prescribed by the
Psychical Society, as ' a mode of communication not
requiring any of the recognized channels of sense.' He
soon takes it more positively as a law of the direct
intercourse of spirit with spirit, as fundamental as gravita-
tion in the physical world. So it becomes, not an
alternative to the spiritistic interpretation, as with
Podmore, but rather its presupposition, and a way of
rendering it feasible and intelligible. Granting, therefore,
that spirits as such are in immediate telepathic interaction
in a subliminal ' metetherial ' ii.e, spiritual) world, it be-
comes arbitrary to deprive them of this power on account
of the mere fact of death. Telepathy from the dead
becomes credible, and the seventh chapter, on ' phantasms
of the dead,' revels in ghost stories. The eighth chapter,
on motor automatism, expounds and interprets the
phenomena of planchette writing, table tilting, etc., and
the evidence of discarnate intelligence they often seem to
involve, which seems sometimes to amount to a ' psychical
invasion,' or ' possession ' of the automatist. Hence
there is an easy transition in the ninth chapter to the
subjects of trance, possession, and ecstasy, in which the
organism may be operated entirely by alien ' spirits,'
while the normal owner may be enjoying a subliminal
excursion into a spiritual world. As finally the action of
spirit on matter is a mystery anyhow, and as the actual
limitation of our power to produce movements to bodies
directly touched by our organism is wholly empirical, and
may result only from the unimaginative habits of the
supraliminal self, and as, moreover, discarnate spirits may
possess a greater and more conscious power to manipulate

xvn PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 381

the molecular arrangements of matter, there is no a priori
reason for discrediting even the stories of telekinesis and
ectopias)!, which form the so-called ' physical phenomena '
of spiritism.

§ 6. Such, in barest outline, and without attempt to re-
produce his multitudinous references to cases, and the felici-
ties of his phrasing, is Myers's argument for the extension
of human personality beyond its habitual limits. It will
be thought by many to pander to the human love of well-
told fairy-tales, and to recall within the bounds of scientific
possibility every aberration of savage superstition. And
certainly Myers has cast his net very wide and deep, and
brought into it not only a fine collection of fish, of which
some are very rare and queer specimens, but also not a
few of the abhorrent monsters of the abyss which common
sense can hardly bear to look upon.

Moreover, in a sense criticism is easy ; in token whereof
we may instance some of its more valid forms. It has been
objected then : (i) That Myers deals largely in suggestions
which, after all, are merely possibilities ; (2) that he never
defines the nature of the personality for which he claims
survival of death, and never proves that what seems to
survive is truly personal ; (3) that such of his facts as
would be generally admitted are capable of alternative
interpretations ; while (4) for the disputed phenomena,
even the copious evidence adduced is inadequate and
dubious ; (5) that telepathy among the living is, as yet,
assumption enough to explain everything ; (6) that his
theory is a jumble of physiological materialism with the
wildest spiritualism ; (7) that he is absurdly optimistic in
his anticipations both as to the benefits to be derived
from the study of our ' metetherial ' environment ; and also
(8) as to the reasonableness of incarnate and discarnate
spirits in forwarding his aim.

§ 7. To these objections it might fairly be replied : as to
(l), that Myers himself claims no more, and more cannot
fairly be expected of him. As to (2), that while he
certainly takes personality for granted, our immediate
experience fully entitles us to do so. The people who

382 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvii

decline to admit the existence of personality until it has
been abstractly defined to their liking, are beyond the pale
of ordinary scientific argument. On the other hand, it
must be granted that the proof of personality in the
subliminal, and of the persistence of a human person after
death is, as yet, on Myers's own showing, somewhat
incomplete. But the indications point that way, and it
was a merit in Myers to refrain from the usual philo-
sophers' leap to the absolute world-ground so soon as
they are driven off the field of ordinary experience.

(3) It is quite true that for most of the admitted facts
of secondary personality, hypnotism, automatism, sleep,
dream, etc., there exist alternative interpretations. That
is, there are descriptions of them in technical formulas.
But these in no case amount to real explanations. More-
over, they are various and complicated, and Myers's
conception of a single subliminal self would effect a great
simplification. Further, it is precisely some of these
comparatively normal facts that seem to need his theory
most. As this point will bear more emphasis, it
may be pointed out that the orthodox psychological
treatment of dreams, e.g., is plainly insufficient. The
conscious self is in no proper sense the creator of its
dreams. Even if we grant that the stuff that dreams are
made of is taken from the experiences of waking life
(though dreams of ' flying,' e.g., show that this is not
strictly true), this does not explain the selection. Nor
does it avail to point to probabilities of peripheral stimula-
tions as the physiological foundation of dreams. The
extraordinary transmutation of the stimuli thus supplied
needs explanation. Why should a mosquito bite during
sleep set up a thrilling tale of battle, murder, and sudden
death ? Who is the maker of these vivid plots to which the
dreamer falls a victim ? It is certainly not the conscious
self of the dream which may be (more or less) identified
with that of waking life. Must we not assume some sort
of subliminal self?^

' Dr. Morton Prince's fascinating study of the tribulations of the ' Beauchamp '
family [The Dissociation of a Personality) warrants, perhaps, the suggestion that
its heroine, 'Sally,' was such a subliminal self.

XVII PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 383

Or should we, still more bravely, argue that since
dreams (while we dream them) have all the marks of an
independent reality, are immersed in a space and a time
of their own, and contain personages just as external to
us, and as uncontrollable in their actions as those of
waking life, these dream-worlds really exist, and are
actually visited by us ? Philosophically something might
be said for this, and still more for the converse of this
view, viz. that our waking life is but an incoherent dream,
whose full explanation would lie in an awakening yet to
come.

This, indeed, was the view taken by one of Myers's
best ' spirits,' Mrs. Piper's ' G. P.,' whose communication
may be cited in answer to complaints that ' spirits ' have
never yet revealed anything novel or worth knowing.^
" You to us," he says (ii. 254), " are sleeping in the material
world ; you look shut up as one in prison, and in order
for us to get into communication with you, we have to
enter into your sphere, as one like yourself, asleep. This
is just why we make mistakes, as you call them, or get
confused and muddled."

The truth is that psychologists have hitherto accepted
the rough criteria of practical life, and disregarded the
theoretic study of dreams, because they seemed to yield
so little fit to use for the purposes of practice. Yet,
what is it but an empirical observation that dream-worlds
are worlds of inferior reality ? ^ Is it not conceivable,
therefore, that we should discover some of superior
reality and value ? At present, while psychology seems
confronted with the choice between the Scylla of the
Subliminal and the Charybdis of real dream-worlds, can
one wonder that it should try to put off the evil day as
long as possible ?

1 Cp. , too, Dr. Wiltse's dream (ii. 315) for a striking account of what ' death '
feels like. A genuine experience like this will always bear comparison with
literary imitations even by so consummate an artist as Plato, e.g. in his ' vision
of Er,' and will be felt to be, psychologically, more convincing. The best re-
production of the psychological quality of such genuine experiences with which I
am acquainted , in literature is to be found, to my thinking, in the ' dream '
finale of Mr. G. L. T)\cM\x\%ov)!% Meaning of Good.

^ Cp. Essay xx. § 22.

384 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvu

(4) It must be admitted that all over the field
covered by Myers much more evidence is required, and
that a critic with the knowledge and temper of, e.^.,
Podmore, could pick endless holes in nearly all of it.
The possibilities of fraud and error seem inexhaustible,
especially if semi-conscious cheating in abnormal mental
states be common. It is true also that in default of
better material Myers sometimes uses half-baked bricks,
just to complete his structure. But he himself was
quite aware of this, and when a man knows that he
has only months before him to complete his life's work,
and feels that if he does not succeed in putting together
the scattered material into a synthesis (however provisional)
no one else will do so, he may well be pardoned if he
makes what use he can of the material that lies handy.
It should be recognized also that a synthesis which
embraces such a multitude of facts does not rest solely
on any one set of them, and in a sense grows independent
of them all. That is, the mere coherence of the inter-
pretation becomes a point in its favour as against a
variety of unconnected alternatives. Again, the collection
and correction of the evidence is the proper function of
the Psychical Society, for which Myers's system provides
the aid of a working theory, a provisional classification,
and a technical terminology.

(5) It is possible that telepathy (in its original sense)
might be stretched over all the facts which it seems too
harsh to dismiss. But, then, telepathy is itself a mere
description, and in no way an explanation. It has to be
interpreted, either in definitely physical or in definitely
spiritual terms ; it can hardly stand by itself as a fact
which transcends the physical order without opening out
upon another. Hence the attempt to conceive it as the
adit to a spirit-world must be pronounced legitimate.

(6) Myers no doubt might have considerably improved
his statement by greater reliance on the contentions of
an idealist philosophy, but the charge of confusing the
physical and the spiritual seems in the main to fail.
For, as we saw (p. 378), Myers has silently adopted the

xvii PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 385

' transmission ' view of soul, and this entitles him to
the free use of all the facts that are presented on the
materialistic side.

(7) Onme ignotum pro magnifico may be a generous
delusion, but at least it makes a good stimulus to research.
Lastly, as to (8), he is well aware that his gospel
will impinge on rooted prejudice and meet the bitterest
hostility. He knows how " immemorial ignorance has
stiffened into an unreasoning incredulity" (i. 157)' He
tells us (ii. TJ) " that the novelties of this book are intended
to work upon preconceptions which are ethical quite as
much as intellectual." ^

But still he underrates the resistance which human
minds and tempers are sure to offer to his doctrine.
Concerning any considerable novelty of thought the
prediction may be made that hardly any one above thirty
will be psychologically capable of adopting it, unless he had
previously been looking for just such a solution. Myers,
therefore, will no more persuade the existing generation
of psychologists than Darwin persuaded the biologists of
his age. It is vain to expect it. Novelty as such must
always make its appeal to the more plastic minds of the
young who have not yet aged into ' great authorities.'

Again, it is obvious that Myers's whole trend of thought
must be utterly distasteful to the numerous people who
do not believe that they have more than an illusory
personality now, and (rightly or wrongly) have no desire
to have it perpetuated after death. Then, again, there
are many whose a priori sense of spiritual dignity is
outraged by what they think the indecorum in which
' ghosts ' have been observed to indulge, and who, as
Myers observes, are the spiritual descendants of the people
who would not listen to a heliocentric astronomy, on the
ground that it was unworthy of heavenly bodies to move
in elliptical, and not in circular, orbits. Many others will
not care to look beyond the fact that the new ' psychical
science ' seems superficially to revive old superstitions of
savage thought — though why it should enhance their

1 Cp. also i. 185, and ii. 2, ii. 79-80.

2 C

386 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvii

confidence in human knowledge to find that immemorial
traditions had been wholly wrong, or destroy it to find
that from the first men had possessed some inkling of the
truth, is perhaps a feeling it were hard to refine into a
logical lucidity. In short, no one who has learnt from
Mr. Balfour that the causes of belief are hardly ever
rational, will expect an immediate revolution in habitual
modes of thinking from the work of Myers.

§ 8. " However this may be, do you in point of fact
believe that immortality is proved?" If I were point
blank asked this question, I should probably reply that
most people are still unaware of the nature of proof.
They imagine that ' proofs ' can be provided which appeal
to ' plain facts,' and rest upon indisputable principles.
Whereas we saw that really no science deals with plain
facts or rests on absolutely certain principles. Its ' facts '
are always relative to its principles, and the principles
always really rest on their ability to provide a coherent
interpretation of the facts. All proof, therefore, is a
matter of degree and accumulation, and no science is
more than a coherent system of interpretations , which,
when applied, will work. In every science, therefore,
there is a finite number of facts which would have to be
rejected or reinterpreted, and a small number of principles
which would have to be modified or withdrawn, in order
to qualify as ' false ' the system of that science. In a
science, however, of a Jiigh degree of certainty, the
principles are well tested and very useful, and the facts
are capable of being added to at pleasure. Also, the
subject is sufficiently explored to minimize the danger of
discovering an anomaly. That a new fact like radium
should prima facie threaten to derange so fundamental a
principle as the Conservation of Energy, and should have
to be bought off by giving up the old sense of the
Indestructibility of Matter, is an incident which occurs
but rarely in a respectable science like Chemistry, and it
speaks well for the open-mindedness of chemists and their
confidence in the stability of their system that they should
have admitted its existence as soon as M. Curie had

XVII PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 387

announced it. But Psychology is not so firmly rooted,
and at present shows the inhospitable temper that comes
from a secret lack of self-assurance. And so psychologists
dare not be as open-minded ; they do not credit them-
selves or others with sanity of soul enough to encounter
abnormal facts without loss of mental balance. In
Psychical Research all is still quite inchoate, and there-
fore plastic, and the final interpretation of its data must
depend on inquiries yet to make.

One can only say, therefore, that Myers's interpretation
has for the first time rendered a future life scientifically
conceivable^ and rendered much more probable the other
considerations in its favour. And, above all, it has rendered
it definitely provable. The scientific status of a hypothesis
depends chiefly on the facilities for experimental verifica-
tion it affords. No matter how probable it may seem at
first sight {i.e. how concordant with our prejudices), it is
naught, if naught can verify it ; no matter how wild it
seems, it is useful, and tends to be accepted, if it can
suggest experiments whereby to test it, and to grapple
with the facts. Now it is one of the greatest merits of
Myers's book that he throughout conceives his hypothesis
in this scientific spirit. His cry is^ver for further observa-
tion, more thought, and keener experimentation. And his
conception is capable at every point of definite investiga-
tion, and at many actually appeals to definite experiment.
Whoever has a vestige of the scientific spirit must regard
this as the atonement for his initial daring.

It may well be that in this way there will gradually
grow up a consistent body of interpretations, embodying
our most convenient way of regarding the facts, which
can be adopted as a whole, even though no single member
of the system taken in isolation will be sufficient to compel
assent. And then human immortality will be scientifically
* proved.' Until then it will remain a matter of belief,
however ' probable ' it grows.

§ 9. How long the ' proof will be in coming who can
say ? If we sit down and wait, we may wait for ever.
Something will depend on the activity of the Society

388 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvn

for Psychical Research and kindred bodies, more on
the attitude of the general world. To work out fully-
all the rich suggestions of Myers's grandiose scheme
might well absorb all the available psychological
energies of hundreds, nay, at the former rate of pro-
gress, of thousands of years. But, short of this, if we
tried to verify only the main ideas, it would be a
question of whether, say, half-a-dozen first-rate minds
could be induced to take up the subject, not (as now) in
the scanty leisure of professional preoccupations, but as
their life's work. If they will, comparatively slight
discoveries might raise the subject from the observational
to the experimental plane, and so indefinitely quicken the
pulse of progress. In psychical, as in all other, science
we must get staid professionals to consolidate the work
of the enthusiastic amateurs who opened out the way.

But it is obvious that to secure them funds are needed,
and that on a generous scale. To some small extent,
perhaps, these may come from a growth in the numbers
of the Society, which has now started an Endowment Fund.
It has modestly asked for ;^8ooo in order to subsidize
a psychologist for special work. But for anything like a
thorough investigation money will be needed on a far more
liberal scale. A vigilant literary committee to record and
probe the spontaneous evidence, and an expensive labora-
tory for experimental tests are obvious necessaries, and
instead of one, a dozen specialists. For all this -;^ 100,000
would scarcely be enough. There is nothing unreasonable
in the view of the Hon. Sec. of the Society, who assured
me that he would undertake to find permanent and profit-
able employment for the income of half a million.

The situation, however, is so discreditable as to warrant
a bolder suggestion. In every civilized community many
millions are annually spent by and on organizations which
profess to be the depositaries of invaluable truths concern-
ing spiritual things, and to regard it as their most sacred
duty to teach and to sustain elaborate systems of spiritual
knowledge. It is, however, a serious drawback to their
efficacy that considerable and growing doubt exists about

XVII PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 389

the authenticity of this knowledge. The position of every
church could be indefinitely strengthened, if it could obtain
further verification of the evidence on which its claims are
based. These claims, moreover, rest largely on allega-
tions susceptible of verification. The spiritual truths pro-
fessed, that is, are not wholly matters of direct personal
experience (though these perhaps are the most distinctive
features of the religious experience) ; they concern also
what were not originally or in intention ' matters of faith '
at all, but matters of observation and experiment, and are
therefore capable of continuous verification by analogy.^

The notion of an initially perfect revelation is, like that
of an initially absolute truth, a prejudice. Even if we had
it, the mere lapse of time would fatally impair its value.
Even initially dubious revelations, on the other hand,
would authenticate themselves by becoming progressive
and increasingly valuable. Yet, strange to say, no church
anywhere bestows any of its energy and its income upon
substantiating in this way its claim to truth. The apolo-
getics of all churches are merely argumentation, and wholly
overlook the simplest, most scientific, and effective means
of establishing their case. The ideas that the proper
function of a church is to be a channel of communication
between the human and the superhuman, that its know-
ledge should be progressive like that of secular science,
that its ' talents ' should not be stowed away for safe
custody, that its revelations should be employed so as to
earn more, that its present apathy is slowly but inevitably
sapping the confidence of mankind in the genuineness of
religious truths, and in the belief professed in them, in
short, that theology could and should be made into an
experimental science, seems never to have occurred to
any one of them.

And yet if the churches should awaken to the fact that
religious truths need verification like any others, and that
they offer to intelligent and persevering research rewards as
great and probable as those of science, they could not but
recognize that they should not merely tolerate psychical

^ Cp. Humanism, ed. i, p. 237 ; ed. 2, p. 322.

390 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvn

research, but even actively participate in it. For such
research might make important contributions to the veri-
fication needed. The churches, therefore, would have to
organize themselves, in part at least, for the purpose of
psychical research, primarily, no doubt, along the lines
indicated by their several creeds ; and thus the difficulty
about finding the means and the workers of a systematic
inquiry would to a large extent be overcome.

However this may be, the money will no doubt
eventually be raised in one way or another. For our
present procedure seems too irrational. It compares un-
favourably with that of the ancient Egyptians who spent
their declining years in learning elaborate spells, to safe-
guard the soul in its future journeyings. We do nothing ;
or at best trust to a little oil, and a little unction. But
will the human reason never realize how monstrous it is
that for our last, our longest, and most momentous
journey alone we make no preparation, nor seek to know
the dangers or the routes, but set out blindly and
stolidly like brutes, or at best like children, equipped
only with the vaguely -apprehended consolations of a
' faith ' we have never dared to verify ?

XVIII
FREEDOM

ARGUMENT

§ I. Humanism must establish the reaHty of Freedom. § 2. Real freedom
involves indetermination. § 3. The difficulty of the question due to a
clash of Postulates. § 4. Determination a postulate of science. Its
methodological grounds. § 5. The moral postulate of Freedom ; it
implies an alternative to wrong, but not to right, action. § 6. The
empirical consciousness of freedom shows that moral choices are neither
common nor unrestricted nor unconnected with character. § 7. The
reconciliation of the scientific and the moral postulates. The methodo-
logical validity of determinism compatible with real, but limited,
indetermination. § 8. Why the alternative theories make no practical
difference. § 9. The positive nature of freedom and its connexion
with the plasticity of habits and the incompleteness of the real. § 10.
Human freedom introduces indetermination into the universe. § li.
Is human the sole freedom in the universe ? It need not be supposed.
The possibility of ascribing a measure of indetermination to all things.
The incompleteness of the proof of mechanism. §12. The metaphysical
disadvantages and advantages of Freedom. Is predestinate perfection
thinkable, and an incomplete reality unthinkable ?

§ I. It is one of the most striking features of a new philo-
sophy that it not only breaks fresh ground but also brings
up old issues in a new form, and exhibits them in a new
light. Accordingly, it is natural enough that Humanism
should have something distinctive to say about the old
puzzle concerning freedom and determination. It is in
fact under obligation to treat this subject, because it has
implicitly committed itself, as its chief exponents have of
course been perfectly aware.^ It has assumed that human

1 See James's ' Dilemma of Determinism ' in The Will to Believe, which is
the only profitable thing written on the whole subject in English for the last
thirty years. My aim in this essay is merely to carry a little further and to render
a little more explicit the. consequences of James's principles. Prof. R.

391

392 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvin

action is endowed with real agency and really makes a
difference alike to the system of truth and to the world
of reality. Without this assumption all the talk about
the * making ' of truth and reality would be meaningless
absurdity. And the assumption itself would be equally
absurd, if all human actions were the completely deter-
mined products of a rigidly necessary order of events.

It is obvious, therefore, that unless the selections and
choices which are shown to pervade our whole cognitive
function are real, the system of our science will collapse
as surely as our conception of moral agency, and that there
can be no real making of either truth or reality. And
conversely, if a philosophy finds it necessary to recognize
choices and selections anywhere^ it must provide for their
ultimate reality and collide with a theory which
declares them to be ultimately illusory. Our trust in an
immediate experience which presents us at least with an
appearance of alternatives and choices stands in need of
vindication, and if we distrusted this appearance, we should
engender a scepticism about our cognitive procedure to
which it would be hard to set limits. Thus our imme-
diate experience plainly suggests the reality of an indeter-
mination which seems irreconcilable with the assumption
of determinism ; and immediate experience our Humanism
dare not disavow.

Humanism, therefore, has to defend and establish the
reality of this indetermination, and so to conceive it that
it ceases to conflict with the postulates of science, and
fits harmoniously into its own conception of existence.
It has, in other words, to make good its conception of a
determinable indetermination and to show that it is
involved in the assertion of a really evolving, and there-
fore as yet incomplete, reality. This it can do by showing
that the indetermination, though real, is not dangerous,
because it is not unlimited, and because it is determinable,
as the growth of habit fixes and renders determinate

F. A. Hoernle has detected the vital importance of this criticism of determinism,
and gives an excellent account of the Humanist attitude towards it in Mind, N.S.
No. 56, pp. 462-7.

xviii FREEDOM 393

reactions which were once indeterminate. But no one
who is at all acquainted with the complexities of human
thought will suppose that this goal of Humanist endeavour
will be easily attained.

§ 2. What we must mean by * freedom ' should be
clear from what has been said, and it will be unnecessary
to delay the discussion by examining attempts to conceive
' freedom ' in any less radical fashion. There have been
of course a variety of attempts to conceive freedom as a
sort of determinism, and these have been admirably classi-
fied by William James as ' soft ' determinisms. But under
sufficient pressure they always harden into the most
adamantine fatalism, and a ' soft ' determinism usually
betokens only the amiable weakness of an intelligence
seeking for a compromise.

Thus the notion of ' self-determination,' for example,
when thought out, will be found to involve that of self-
creation, and it may be doubted whether any being,
actual or imagined, could completely satisfy its require-
ments, if we except the jocose paradoxes of a few Indian
creation-myths in which the Creator first lays the World-
Egg, and then hatches himself out of it. In all the
ordinary exemplifications of the notion, the being which
is supposed to determine itself is ultimately the necessary
product of other beings with which it can no longer
identify itself We are made by a long series of ancestors,
and these in their turn were inevitably generated by non-
human forces — of a purely physical kind, if science is to
be trusted. Nor do we escape this derivation of the * self-
determining ' agent from a not-self by postulating a non-
natural cosmic consciousness, and trusting to it to break
through the chains of natural necessity. For such a being
must be conceived either as itself the imponent of the
natural necessity to which we are enslaved, or, if it escapes
therefrom itself, as abrogating it so thoroughly as to
invalidate our whole faith in a stable order of nature.
Moreover, in neither case would such a being be our
' self any more than is the stellar nebula, among the last
and least of whose differentiations we are bidden to enrol

394 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvm

ourselves. Any * universal consciousness ' must be comnnon
to us all, and cannot therefore be that which is peculiar
to each, and the source of our unique individuality. It is
better, therefore, to accept the doctrine of our ' self-deter-
mination ' by identification with the Absolute as sheer
dogma than to try to think it out.

We shall dismiss, therefore, from consideration any use
of * freedom ' which does not primarily involve the pos-
sibility of real alternatives, between which real choices
have to be made, which are not merely illusory.

§ 3. Now the difficulty of the question of freedom
arises from the fact that it lies in the focus where two
of the great postulates that guide our actions meet and
collide. But herein also lies its interest and its instructive-
ness for the theory of knowledge. For nothing is better
calculated to reveal the nature of our postulation than the
way in which we treat such cases.

The two postulates in question are the Scientific
Postulate of Determinism and the Ethical Postulate of
Freedom. The first demands that all events shall be
conceived as fully determined by their antecedents, in
order that they may be certainly calculable once these
are known ; the second demands that our actions shall
be so conceived that the fulfilment of duty is possible in
spite of all temptations, in order that man shall be
responsible and an agent in the full sense of the term.

It is clear, however, that these postulates conflict. If
the course of events really conforms to the determinist
postulate, no alternatives are possible. No man, there-
fore, can act otherwise than he does act. Nor is there
any sense in bidding him do otherwise than he does or
be other than he is ; for good or for evil his predestined
course seems to be inevitably marked out for him, down
to the minutest detail, by forces that precede and trans-
cend his individual personality. To speak of respon-
sibility or agency in respect to such a being seems a
mockery ; man is but a transitory term in an infinite
series of necessitated events which recedes into the past,
and portends its extension into the future, without end ;

XVIII FREEDOM 395

so that at no point can any independence or initiative be
ascribed to him.

We are confronted, then, by this dilemma, that if the
course of events is wholly determined, the whole of the
ideas and beliefs and phraseology which imply the con-
trary must rest upon illusion. There are not really in
the world any alternatives, disjunctions, contingencies,
possibilities ; hypotheses, doubts, conditions, choices, selec-
tions are delusions of our ignorance, which could not be
harboured by a mind which saw existence as it really is,
steadily and as a whole. If per contra the course of
events is not determined, we seem to reject the sole
assumption on which it can be known and calculated, and
to reduce nature to a chaos. We must sacrifice either our
knowledge or ourselves. For what alternative can be
found to these imperious postulates ? If all things are
determined, all are irredeemably swept along in one vast
inhuman flow of Fate ; if anything is undetermined, we
have sold ourselves to a demon of caprice who can every-
where disrupt the cosmic order.

It speaks well for the levelheadedness of humanity
that it has not allowed itself to be scared to death by
the appalling pretensions of these philosophic bogies ; and
that on the whole mankind has exhibited an equanimity
almost equal to the sangfroid of Descartes when he set
himself to doubt methodically everything that existed,
but resolved meanwhile not to change his dinner hour.

In point of fact determinists and indeterminists for all
practical purposes get on quite well with each other and
with uncritical common sense. They profess to think the
universe a very different thing, but they all behave in very
much the same way towards it.

Still it is worth while to try to account for so strange
a situation. And if we have the patience to analyse
precisely the nature of the conflicting postulates, and of
the immediate consciousness of freedom, we shall perhaps
perceive how the puzzle is constructed.

§ 4. Determinism is an indispensable Postulateof Science
as such. Its sway extends, not merely over the natural

396 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvm

sciences, in which it is nowadays often thought to
originate because its somewhat discreditable ethical origin
has been forgotten/ but quite as cogently over theology
and ethics. Unpredictable miracles and incalculable
choices are just as disconcerting and subversive as inter-
ruptions of the mechanical sequence of happenings.

The reason is that, always and everywhere, we are
interested in predicting the future behaviour of things,
because we wish to adjust our conduct accordingly. We
welcome, therefore, an assumption which will constitute
a general justification of our habitual procedure, and
encourages us to try to predict the future of all things
from their known antecedents.

The assumption of Determinism, therefore, has primarily
a moral significance ; it is an encouragement and not a
revelation. It does not in itself enable us to predict how
anything will behave ; to discover this we have to
formulate the special ' laws ' of its behaviour. But it
gives us a general assurance to counteract the primary
impression of confusion with which the universe might
otherwise afflict us. It justifies us in looking for special
laws and rejecting a priori the attribution of events to
lawless and incalculable chance. Whenever experience
confronts us with ' facts ' which exhibit such a character,
we feel emboldened to declare them to be mere ' appear-
ances.' The facts, we affirm, are really law-abiding, only
we do not yet know their laws. And to a perfect know-
ledge all events would be completely calculable. In short,
by making the determinist assumption we nerve human
science to carry on from age to age its heroic struggle
against the brute opacity, the bewildering variety, of the
presented sequence of events.

But there is nothing in all this to carry the assumption

^ This very prettily exemplifies the divergence between the origin of a belief
and its validity. For as a matter of history determinism was devised as an
excuse for the bad man, and arose out of Socratic intellectualism. We see
from Aristotle's Ethics {Eth. Nic. iii. ch. 5) that in his time the moralist had
to contend against the view that vice is involuntary while virtue is voluntary.
Aristotle meets it by showing that the argument proves virtue to be as involun-
tary as vice. This inference has merely to be accepted to lead to full-blown deter-
minism. Accordingly we find that in the next generation this was done, and
the ' freewill ' controversy was started between the Stoics and the Epicureans.

xviii FREEDOM 397

out of the realm of methodology into that of metaphysics.
By conceiving Determinism as a postulate we go a very
little way towards showing that determination is actual
and complete and an ultimate fact. For it is quite easy
to accept it as a methodological assumption without claim-
ing for it any ontological validity. So long as we restrict
ourselves to the methodological standpoint any postulate
is good while it is serviceable ; its ultimate validity is not
required or inquired into : nay, it may continue to be
serviceable even after it has been discovered to be false.

This point may be illustrated by an instructive
example suggested by the late Prof. Henry Sidgwick.^
He supposes that " we were somehow convinced that the
planets were endowed with Free Will," and raises the
question how far this would reasonably impair our con-
fidence in the stability and future of the Solar System.
Now, according to the ordinary account of the matter as
given by a dogmatic and metaphysical rendering of
Determinism, the consequences should be terrible. The
fatal admission of indetermination should carry with it
the death-knell of astronomy, and ultimately of all science.
For of course we should always have to face the con-
tingency that the planets might depart incalculably from
their orbits, and so our most careful calculations, our
most cogent inferences, could always be refuted by the
event. ' What use, therefore, is it any longer,' a convinced
determinist might exclaim, ' to try to know anything
when the very basis of all knowing is rendered funda-
mentally unknowable ? '

But a practical man of science would decline to concur
in so alarmist an estimate of the situation. He would
wait to see whether anything alarming happened. He
would reflect that after all the planets might not exercise
their freedom to depart from their courses, and might
abstain from whirling the Solar System headlong to
perdition, at least in his time. And even if they did
vary their orbits, their vagaries might prove to be so
limited in extent that they would not be of practical

1 Methods of Ethics, bk. i. ch. v. § 3.

398 STUDIES IiN HUMANISM xvm

importance. In fact, the divergences might be so small
as to be cloaked by the discrepancies between the
calculated and the observed orbits, which until then had
been ascribed to the imperfection of our knowledge. It
would only be if de facto he found himself a horrified
spectator of heavenly bodies careering wildly across the
sky that he would renounce the attempt to predict their
behaviour. Until then he would continue to make his
calculations and to compile his nautical almanacs, hoping
and praying the while that the Sun's influence would
prevent Mars and Venus from going wrong. For however
much his inward confidence in the practical value of his
labours might be abated, his methods would be affected not
one jot. So long as it was worth while to calculate the
planets' orbits, he would have to assume methodologically
that they were determined according to the law of
gravitation, just as before. He would realize, that is,
that the methodological use of his deterministic principle
could survive the discovery of its metaphysical falsity.
For since the ' free ' act was ex Jiypothesi incalculable, the
truth of freedom as a metaphysical fact could yield no
method by which calculations could be made and
behaviour predicted, and hence science would unavoid-
ably ignore it.

We see, then, (i) that in whatever way the meta-
physical question is decided, the methodological use of
the determinist principle is not interfered with, and
that science in consequence is safe, whatever metaphysics
may decree. And (2) the principle, and with it science,
in so far as it depends on the principle and not on
actual experience, is practically safe whatever the actual
course of events. For however irregularly and intricately
things might behave, they could not thereby force us
to renounce our postulate. We should always prefer to
ascribe to our ignorance of the law what might really be
due to inherent lawlessness. The postulate would only
be abandoned in the last resort, when it had ceased to
be of the slightest practical use to any one, even as a
merely theoretic encouragement in attempting the control

xvm FREEDOM 399

of events. (3) It should follow from this that the
scientific objection to a doctrine of Freedom was strictly
limited to its introduction of an unmanageable contingency
into scientific calculations. It would hold against an
indeterminism which rendered events incalculable, but
not against a belief in Freedom as such. A conception
of Freedom, therefore, which allowed us to calculate the
' free ' event, would be scientifically quite permissible.
And a conception of Freedom which issued in a plurality
of calculable alternatives would be scientifically un-
objectionable, even though it would smother meta-
physical Determinism with kindness and surfeit it
with an embarras de richesses. We should prepare
ourselves, therefore, to look out for such a conception of
Freedom.

§ 5. In considering the moral Postulate of Freedom
we should begin by noting that the moralist has no
direct objection to the calculableness of moral acts and
no unreasoning prejudice in favour of indeterminism.
He seems to need it merely in order to make real the
apparent alternatives with which the moral life confronts
him. But he would have as much reason as the
determinist to deplore the irruption into moral conduct
of acts of Freedom, if they had to be conceived as
destructive of the continuity of moral character : he
would agree that if such acts occurred, they could only
be regarded as the irresponsible freaks of insanity. But
he might question whether his dissatisfaction with
determinism necessarily committed him to so subversive
a conception of moral freedom. He would deny, in
short, that rigid determination or moral chaos were the
only alternatives.

The moralist, moreover, if he were prescient, would
admit that he could perfectly conceive a moral life
without indetermination. Nay, he might regard a moral
agent as possessed of the loftiest freedom whose conduct
was wholly calculable and fully determined, and there-
fore absolutely to be trusted. For whether or not he
regarded a course of conduct as objectionable would

400 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvm

naturally depend on its moral character, and a good
life is all the better for resting on a staunch basis of
fixed habits.

As compared with such a life, it would of course
have to be admitted that an indetermination in moral
action which implied a possibility of wrong-doing was
a stain upon the agent's character, and indicative of a
defect or incomplete development of the intelligence
or moral nature. The moralist, therefore, would agree
with Aristotle that the divine ideal would be that of a
' necessary ' being, fully determined in its actions by its
own nature, and therefore ' free ' to follow its promptings,
and to realize without impediment its own perfections.
Why then, and where, does the moralist come into con-
flict with determinism ? It is only when we have to
deal practically with the bad man that it becomes morally
necessary to insist that an alternative to his bad life
must be really possible. The bad man's life may be
habitually bad, but his case is not hopeless, unless he
is necessitated to go on in the way he is going. If
alternatives are possible, his redemption is possible. But
his redemption is hopeless, if there never was but one
way for him and all the world. The moralist, therefore,
demands an alternative to the bad man's foredoomed
badness, in order to rationalize the moral universe.

He wants to be able to say to the bad man : ' You
need not have become the leper you are. You might
have moulded yourself otherwise. Your villainous
instincts and unhappy circumstances do not exculpate
you. You might have resisted your temptations. Even
now your case is not quite hopeless. Your nature is not
wholly rigid. In God's universe no moral lapses are
wholly irretrievable. Occasions therefore will present
themselves in which, even for you, there will be real
alternatives to evil-doing, and if you choose to do right,
you may yet redeem yourself But he does not need
or desire to say analogously to the good man : ' In spite
of the deeply ingrained goodness of your habits, you are
still free to do evil. May I live to see the day when

xviii FREEDOM 401

you commit a crime and vindicate thereby your moral
freedom ! '

The moralist, in short, insists on the reality of the
alternative in the one case only ; he has no objection to a
freedom which transcends itself and is consolidated into
impeccable virtue. In other words, he does not wish to
conceive all moral acts as indeterminate, but only some ;
and he has no need whatever to conceive them as inde-
terminable. This alone suffices to constitute an essential
difference between the real demand for moral freedom
and the bogey of indeterminism which determinists seek
to put in its place.

It should further be observed that there is no moral
need to insist on an unlimited indetermination even in
order to impress the bad man. A very slight degree of
plasticity will suffice for all ethical demands. And in
point of fact no moralist or indeterminist has ever denied
the reality of habits. Any notable alteration of habit
or sudden conversion is always regarded as more or less
miraculous, if it tends in the right direction, or as morbid,
if it does not. We see, therefore, that the moral postulate
of Freedom is by no means in itself an absurd or extreme
one, even though it is not yet apparent how it can
scientifically be satisfied.

§ 6. We may, however, obtain light on this subject by
next considering the empirical consciousness of Freedom.
Consciousness certainly appears to affirm the existence of
real alternatives, and of real choices between them. But
it can hardly be said to testify to a freedom which is
either unceasing or unrestricted.

( I ) What we feel to be ' free ' choices are compara-
tively rare events in a moral life of which the greater part
seems to be determined by habits and circumstances leaving
us neither a real, not even an apparent, choice. Empirically
our free choices occur as disturbances in the placid flow
of experiences, as distinctly upsetting to the equilibrium
of our lives as the crises in which we feel 'unfree' and
constrained to do what we would rather not. Both felt
freedom and felt necessity, in short, are symptoms of a

402 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvm

crisis, and mark the turning-points of a life. They are
in a sense correlative and indicative of a certain (specific-
ally human) stage in moral development.^

(2) The alternatives which we empirically encounter
never seem to be unlimited. We never feel ' free ' to do
anything and everything. Intellectually our choice seems
always to be one between alternative ways of achieving
an end, of realizing a good. Morally it seems always to
be a choice between ' duty ' and ' inclination,' ' right ' and
' wrong.' We feel ' free ' to choose, but not at random ;
the alternatives are definitely labelled ' wrong but pleasant '
and ' right but repugnant.'

(3) These alternatives do not seem unconnected with
our character. So far from appearing to be so, it is of
the essence of our ' choice ' that both alternatives should
appeal to us. Alike if our sense of duty had grown
strong enough, and we had no inclination to do anything
but what is right ; and if evil indulgences had utterly
destroyed our sense of duty, and we retained no inkling
of what was right, our choice would disappear, and with
it the feeling that we were ' free.'

Our moral ' freedom,' therefore, seems to indicate a
moral condition intermediate between that of the angel
and that of the devil. It seems to lie in the indeterminate-
ness of a character which is not yet fixed in its habits for
good or evil, but still sensitive to the appeals of both.
Similarly, the intellectual alternatives would disappear for
intelligences either vastly more perfect or vastly less
perfect than our own, A mind that could unerringly pick
out the best means for the realization of its ends would
not be perplexed by alternatives, any more than a mind
that was too stupid to perceive any but the one most
obvious course. In either case, therefore, the reality of
the alternatives and the feeling of ' freedom ' which accom-
panies our choice seem to be relative to definite moral
and intellectual states which occur at a definite stage of
habituation. A mind to which the truths of arithmetic
are still contingent, which sometimes judges 12x12 to

1 As I pointed out long ago in Riddles of the Sphinx, pp. 445-6.

xviii FREEDOM 403

be 144 and sometimes not, is not yet decided in its habits
of arithmetical calculation. A will to which moral alter-
natives are contingent, which when entrusted with a bottle
of whisky doubts whether to get drunk or to stay sober,
is not yet established in its virtue.

In both cases, no doubt, the contingency of our reaction
betokens a defect. To a perfect knowledge the best
course would allow no inferior alternative to be enter-
tained ; a perfect will would not be tempted by an alter-
native to the right course. To a combination, therefore,
of perfect will with perfect knowledge no alternatives of
any sort could exist, and no act could ever be ' contingent.'

But why should this prevent us from recognizing the
alternatives that seem to exist for us ? It only renders
them relative to the specific nature of man. It does not
render them unintelligible. They are not irruptions from
nowhere. They spring from a character in which they are
naturally rooted, because that character is still contingent.

When, therefore, the determinist attempts to represent
our freedom as incalculably upsetting the continuity of
character, he is stooping to sheer calumny. If I am
perplexed to choose between a number of possible means
to my end, it is because just my intelligence presents just
those alternatives to me under. just those circumstances.
A mind whose make-up, knowledge, and training were
even slightly different might have quite different alterna-
tives, or none at all, or be puzzled in cases when I should
not feel the slightest hesitation. So too our moral choices
are personal ; they presuppose just the characters and
circumstances they arise from.

§ 7. It is extremely important to observe the precise
character of these empirical appearances, because if this
is done, it is easy to perceive in them the real solution of
the whole crux. They directly suggest a way of recon-
ciling the scientific and the ethical postulate ; a way so
simple that it would seem incredible that no one should
have perceived it before, had we not learnt from long and
sad experience that the simplest solutions are usually the
last which the philosophic mind is able to hit upon or

404 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvni

willing to accept, especially if such solutions happen also
to be empirically obvious. And yet what could be simpler
than the inferences from the facts we have described ? If
it is true that empirically the ' free ' acts always seem to
spring from the given situation, if the alternatives always
seem to exist for a particular mind under particular
circumstances, does it not follow at once that whichever
of tJie alternatives is chosen, it will appear to be rationally
connected with the antecedent circumstances ? There will
be no break, and no difficulty of transition from the act
to its antecedents and back again.

If, therefore, the actual course of events is contem-
plated ex post facto, it will always be possible to argue
that it is intelligible because it sprang from character and
circumstances. And if our purpose is deterministic, it
can always be maintained that no other course could
have been adopted ; that because it was intelligible, no
other course would have been. But this is manifestly
false ; the alternative, had it been adopted, would have
seemed equally intelligible, just because it was such as to
be really entertained by the agent under the circum-
stances, and as naturally rooted in them. After the event,
therefore, the determinist is in the position to argue
' heads I win, tails you lose ' ; whatever the issue, he can
claim it as a confirmation of his view. Before the event,
on the other hand, he was always impotent ; he could
always modestly disclaim prediction (and therewith avoid
refutation) on the ground of insufficient knowledge. His
position, therefore, seems inexpugnable.

And yet what has happened has really utterly upset
him ; for we have come upon a sort of third alternative
to Determinism and Indeterminism. The determinists
had argued that if the course of events was not rigidly
determined it must be wholly indeterminable ; that if it
was not uniquely calculable, it could not be calculated at
all. But here we appear to have a case in which alternative
courses are equally calculable, and to be confronted with
a nature which is really indeterminate and really deter-
minable in alternative ways which seem equally natural

xvm FREEDOM 405

and intelligible. The determinist, therefore, is really
baffled. It no longer follows from the rejection of his
theory that we must give up calculating and understand-
ing the course of things. If their nature is such that at
various points they engender real alternatives, they will
engender a plurality of intelligible possibilities, and the
choice between them will constitute a real ' freedom,' with-
out entailing any of the dreadful consequences with which
determinism and indeterminism both seemed to menace
us. Thus we need neither overturn the altar of science,
nor sacrifice ourselves upon it : the freedom, which seemed
lost so long as only one course of nature seemed rational,
intelligible, and calculable, is restored when we recognize
that two or more may seem intelligible, because equally
natural and calculable. We can satisfy, therefore, the
scientific postulate of calculability, without denying the
reality of the alternatives which our moral nature seems
both to require and to attest. For we can confidently
lay it down that no event will ever occur which will not
seem intelligibly connected with its antecedents after it
has happened. It will, therefore, be judged to have been
calculable, even though this inference will contain a
certain modicum of illusion. For though, no doubt, if
we had known enough, we might have calculated it out
as a real possibility, we could not have made sure that
just this possibility and not any of its alternatives would
actually be realized. But practically this is more than
enough for science, and would admit of far greater success
in calculation than the deficiencies of our knowledge now
actually concede to us.

It must not be thought, however, that the conception
of Freedom we have thus arrived at constitutes a refuta-
tion of Determinism. Methodological postulates as such
cannot be refuted ; they can only be disused. And meta-
physical dogmas also, that is, ultimate attitudes of
thought, cannot be refuted ; they can only be chosen or
rejected ; for they form the foundations on which our
demonstrations rest. Determinism, then, as a scientific
postulate, has not been endangered ; as a metaphysical

4o6 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvm

creed it reduces itself, like all such ultimate assumptions,
to a matter of free choice. And herein, in this case, lies
a paradox, perhaps ; for as we cannot vindicate our free-
dom unless we are determined to be free, so we cannot
compel those to be free who are free to be determined,
and prefer to think it so.^

§ 8. But though this paradox may be left to the care-
ful consideration of determinists, we can now resolve
another — that which was noted in § 5 — as to the charming
agreement which obtains between determinists, libertarians,
and ordinary folk, in their practical behaviour. For if the
postulates are really methodological necessities, every one
in his practice will have to use them, however he may
think about them metaphysically, and whether or not he
thinks about them at all. The theoretic divergences,
therefore, in our views will make no practical difference ;
both parties will use both postulates, and will have a
right to do so.

(i) Every one has to take it for granted that the
course of events is calculable in so far as he is interested
in forecasting it. This, indeed, is merely a periphrasis of
the statement that determinism is a methodological postu-
late. The libertarian, therefore, has the same right as
any one else to treat events as calculable, to try to calcu-
late all he can and knows. He may be conscious that
this aim can never be fully realized, that things are not
wholly calculable ; but while he calculates he must hope
that they will behave as if they were determined, and will
not frustrate his efforts by exhibiting their freedom.
Even if he fails, it will be his interest to attribute his
lack of success, not to the real contingency he has
admitted into nature, but rather to the defects of his
knowledge. He will wholly agree, therefore, with the
determinist that if he had known more, his calculation
would have succeeded. And he would defend himself by
urging that anyhow the contingency introduced into our

^ As William James well says, freedom " ought to be freely espoused by men
who can equally well turn their backs upon it. In other words, our first act of
freedom, if we are free, ought in all inward propriety be to affirm that we are
free " ( Will to Believe, p. 146).

xviir FREEDOM 407

world by our ignorance must vastly exceed that due to
any real indetermination in the nature of things.

In dealing, on the other hand, with cases which evoke
the moral postulate of freedom, the libertarian will, of
course, recognize the reality of the freedom he has
assumed. But this will not debar him from calculating.
He will assume the indetermination in the nature he is
studying to be real, and calculate the alternative courses
to which it can be supposed to lead. And if he has a
pretty clear conception of the nature of his ' free ' fellow-
men, his success in forecasting their behaviour will not
fall sensibly short of his success in calculating that of
more remote natures which he takes to be fully
determined.

(2) The determinist regards the scientific postulate as
the expression of an ultimate truth about reality. But
in practice it reduces itself to the expression of a pious
hope. * If I knew all the antecedents, I could calculate
all the consequences,' is an aspiration and a wish rather
than a positive achievement. This was why we treated
it in § 4 as essentially a moral encouragement to
endeavour. Even the determinist, moreover, must be
dimly conscious that his wish will never be granted him,
that the whole course of events never will be calculated
by him. Why, then, should he repine at learning that
the impossibility of his ideal rests ultimately on the
inherent nature of reality rather than on the ineradicable
weakness of his mind ? Practically it makes no difference.
He finds de facto that he cannot calculate all events. He
tries them all, just like the libertarian. But he is baffled
in just the same way. Both, therefore, must agree that
contingencies exist in their common world which they
cannot calculate. To deny their ultimate reality is no
practical assistance ; it only adds the annoyance that we
must conceive ourselves to be subject to illusion and
incapable of perceiving things as they really are.

On the other hand, in dealing with moral contingencies
the determinist has to treat them as just as real as the
libertarian. However firmly he may be convinced that

408 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvm

his neighbour's acts are rigidly determined, he does not
always feel certain that he knows his nature sufficiently
to predict them. He is fortunate if he can feel sure
what alternatives are most likely to appeal to him, and
calculate the consequences and adjust his own course
accordingly. In practice, therefore, he will do just as the
libertarian did : he will have to recognize, that is, real
but calculable, alternatives which exist, at all events
for him.

In other words, the pragmatic difference between the
rival theories tends to be evanescent ; in practice both
parties have to pocket their metaphysics and to act
sensibly ; in theory the differences are such that their
influence on practice is very remote, and mainly emotional.
For common sense, again, there are no practical alter-
natives ; the whole metaphysical controversy, therefore,
seems nugatory, and is regarded with the utmost
equanimity. And is not this all as it should be in a
universe in which thought is secondary to action ?

§ 9. We have, however, pushed forward our doctrine
of Freedom somewhat rapidly, and shall do well to
analyse its nature in order to secure our ground.

We should realize, in the first place, that we took a
risk in declaring the immediate consciousness of Freedom
to contain the solution of the puzzle. There is always
a risk in taking appearances to contain ultimate truth.
But it is not so serious as to take them as containing no
truth at all. And to our Humanism it will naturally
seem a better risk to take to trust appearances than to
invalidate them for no sufficient reason. Let us there-
fore bravely accept the risk and pose our critics by
asking. Why, after all, should the alternatives which
seem to be real not be really real ? Because to regard
them as real renders science impossible and life chaotic ?
That allegation we have shown to be untrue. Science is
in no danger from our doctrine, and for the purposes of
life we all assume the reality of contingencies. Because
we do not yet understand the positive nature of Freedom,
beyond this that it involves indetermination ? And because

xvni FREEDOM 409

a real indetermination ultimately leads to a metaphysically
unthinkable view of the universe ?

These latter suggestions are more deserving of con-
sideration. And so let us first explore the positive
nature of the sort of Freedom we have seemed to find,
considering it empirically and psychologically, before
attempting to evaluate its metaphysical significance.

There does not seem to be any reason why we should
not accept the empirical reality of psychological indeter-
mination, once we have really disabused our minds of
the prejudice engendered by a misconception of the
scientific postulate. Such indetermination, indeed, appears
to be a natural incident in the growth of a habit, and the
capacity for retaining a certain plasticity and growing new
habits seems to be essential to existence in a universe
which has, on the one hand, acquired a certain stability
and order, and yet, on the other, is still evolving new
conditions, to which novel adjustments are from time to
time required. A nature, therefore, which was entirely
indeterminate in its reactions, and one which was entirely
rigid and determinate, would alike be inefficacious and
unsuited to our world. To live in it we need a certain
degree of plasticity and the intelligence to perceive when
better adjustments can be effected by varying our habits
of reaction. This power, indeed, seems to be the essence
of our ' reason.' ^ Why then should philosophy insist on
regarding this plasticity as quite illusory ?

It appears, further, to be a misapprehension when this
plasticity of habit is regarded as conflicting with the con-
ception of ' law.' Law, subjectively regarded from the
standpoint of a knower trying economically to conceive
the universe, means regularity, and therefore calculable-
ness and trustworthiness. Phrasing it intellectualistically,
this constitutes the ' intelligibility ' of the natural order.
Regarded objectively, however, ' law ' means nothing but
habit. The ' laws of nature,' however they may be
thought to originate, are de facto the established habits
of things, and their constancy is an empirical fact of

' Cp. Essay xvi. § 4.

410 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvm

observation. It is from experience alone that we learn
that nature in general conforms itself to our postulate of
regularity and renders it so applicable that we can take
it to be ' true.'

But experience never fully warrants the assertion that
the habits of nature are absolutely fixed and constant.
For all we can prove to the contrary, even the most
fundamental laws may be changing — let us hope
* evolving ' into something better. Over large tracts of
nature — wherever we can trace the working of intelligence
— the laws do not even appear to have an absolute
constancy. All this, however, will not interfere with our
methodological assumption of constancy unless the changes
in habits are very rapid ; as rapid, say, as the changes in
the fashions. Nor will it necessarily render the course of
things unintelligible. On the contrary, we have seen that
adaptive innovations in habits, intelligent divergences from
law, are the very essence of ' reason,' and if the changes
of fashions are irrational in their frequency, they are at
the same time rational, as satisfying the desire to display
one's credit with one's dressmaker or tailor.

There is then no real psychological difficulty about the
idea that the plasticity of habit carries with it a certain
indetermination, which, however, is intelligible and calcul-
able and salutary. The only difficulty really involved
lies in conceiving a nature which is, as it were, divided
against itself and advancing at different rates in different
parts, in such a way that the ' desires ' may engender
internal friction by persistently hankering after ingrained
habits of behaviour long after the ' reason ' has condemned
their inappropriateness under the now altered circum-
stances. And this difficulty no doubt deserves more
attention than psychologists and moralists have yet
bestowed upon it. But in whatever way it may be
explicable, it can hardly be denied that something of the
sort actually exists ; and for our present purpose this
suffices.

Metaphysically, on the other hand, the difficulty which
the existence of indetermination involves is a very big

xvni FREEDOM 411

one. If, that is, it is admitted to exist at all, it touches
the last problems of ontology. For it resolves itself
into the question of the possibility of thinking a really
incomplete reality, a world which is really plastic and
growing and changing. And the a priori sort of meta-
physics has always found the reality of change an in-
superable stumbling-block.^ We, on the other hand, may
think the reality of change too evident to argue over, we
may deem the objections raised against it silly quibbles,
we may see that to deny it only leads to phantom
universes having no relation to our own ; but we must
recognize the reality of a formidable prejudice. It will
be more prudent, therefore, to postpone the final tussle
with this prejudice till we have considered (i) how far the
consequences of the human Freedom we have conceived
may be traced throughout the world ; (2) how far some-
thing analogous can be attributed to the other existences
in the world ; and (3) how we should value a world whose
nature is ultimately ' free.'

§ 10. //" human freedom is real, the world is really
indeterminate. This is easily demonstrable. For if we
really have the power to choose between alternatives, the
course of things will necessarily differ according as we do
one thing or an other. This follows alike whether we
conceive the rest of the world to be fully determined, or
to have itself some power of spontaneous choice. If a
single variable factor is introduced among a mass of
invariable antecedents, the consequents will needs be
different. If it is introduced amid a mass of antecedents
which themselves are variable, the final outcome may
indeed remain the same, but only if these other factors
set themselves intelligently to counteract and thwart the
first. Thus the intermediate course of events will yet
be different, seeing that it will have been altered to
encounter the first variable. In either case, therefore,
there will be alternative courses of history, and a real
indetermination in a universe which harbours a free agent.

Humanly speaking, the first case seems clearly to be

1 Cp. Essay ix. § i.

412 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvm

congruous with the facts. Human purposes have not all
been thwarted ; they have left their mark upon the earth,
and made it a very different place from what it would
otherwise have been. Of course, however, we may hold
that their realization has occurred only in so far as it has
not thwarted an ulterior and diviner purpose which has
a countermove to every human sin and error.^

This consequence, then, of human freedom is too clear
to be denied. It can only be minimized. After all, it
may be said, what does human freedom come to ? It can
only effect infinitesimal changes on the surface of the
earth. It cannot divert the stars in their courses, it
cannot even regulate the motions of the earth, it cannot
ward off the ultimate collapse of the Solar System.

To which it may be replied (i) that our agency is
not necessarily negligible because it cannot control the
cosmic masses ; (2) that our interests are chiefly confined
to the earth's surface, and that it matters not a little
whether or not we can manipulate that ; (3) that the extent
to which we can alter the course of things depends on
the extent to which we can render things plastic to our
purposes ; (4) that with audacity and study we may find
the world far more plastic than as yet we dare to think.
Science is as yet only beginning, and mankind is only
beginning to trust itself to science, which as yet hardly
dares to speculate about all that it might possibly attempt.
Lastly (5), even differences of choices which at first
seem infinitesimal may lead to growing divergences, and
ultimately constitute all the difference between a world in
which we are saved and one in which we are damned.

On the whole, therefore, we shall do well not to think
too meanly of our powers, but to reflect rather on the
responsibilities involved even in our most trivial choices.
If we can really make our 'fate' and remake our world,
it behoves us to make sure that they shall not be made
amiss.

§ 1 1. It will next be politic to face an objection which
has probably long been simmering in our readers' minds.

^ Cp. James, Will to Believe, pp. 181-2.

xviii FREEDOM 413

' Is it credible/ they will incline to ask, ' that man alone
should be free and form an exception to the rest of the
universe ? And if the rest of the universe is determined,
is it not probable that man will be likewise ? '

Now it cannot be admitted that our view of man
should necessarily be falsified in order to accommodate it
to our beliefs about the rest of the universe. But at the
same time the human mind finds exceptions irksome, and
is disposed to question them. We can, however, get rid
of this * exception ' in another way. Instead of sacrificing
our freedom to cosmic analogies, let us try to trace some-
thing analogous to our freedom throughout the universe.

It is evident, in the first place, that a higher and more
perfect being than man, if the intelligent operations of
such a one are traceable in the world, would be both
' freer ' than man, that is more able to achieve his ends
and less often thwarted, and also more determinate in
his action, and more uniform and calculable in the
execution of his purposes. It is clear, therefore, that a
* God ' would work by ' law ' rather than by ' miracle,' in
proportion as he really controlled the world, and that
consequently it would be very easy to misinterpret his
agency, and to ascribe it to a mechanical necessity ;
which of course is what has usually been done.

Turning next to beings lower in the scale than our-
selves, we have of course good reason to attribute to the
higher animals a mental constitution very like our own.
And that should carry with it something very like our
sense of freedom. A dog, for example, appears to be
subject to conflicting impulses, to doubt and hesitate,
to attend selectively and choose, and sometimes to exhibit
a spontaneity which baffles calculation almost as com-
pletely as that of his master. We can indeed imagine
the great motives that broadly determine his conduct, but
in some respects his motives are harder to appreciate,
because his mind is remoter from our own.

As we descend the scale of life these difficulties grow
more marked ; our spiritual sympathy with, and inward
understanding of, the conduct we observe grow less and

414 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvm

less. The feelings which prompt, and the motives which
impel, to the spontaneous acts we notice grow ever more
mysterious. But externally we can still predict the lower
animal's behaviour. We do not understand the why of
its spontaneous, random motions. But we observe that
these variations lie between certain narrow limits, which
are narrowed down as intelligence is lowered. An amoeba
never does anything startling to shock the biologist.
Hence as intelligence diminishes or grows alienated from
our own, conduct becomes more uniform, and therefore in
a way more calculable. Only it is in another way. We
have become external spectators of acts to which we have
lost the inner clue.

Nevertheless when we descend to the inanimate, and
meet apparently perfect regularity, we feel that we have
reached the true home of mechanical ' law ' which knows
no breaking, disturbed by no intelligence, and varied by
no vestige of spontaneous choice. But we have no
inward comprehension whatever of the processes we watch.
Why should material masses gravitate inversely as the
square of the distance? What satisfactions can they
derive from this ratio in particular ? Why should atoms
dance just in the mazy rhythms they severally choose ?
Why should electrons carry just the ' charges ' they
empirically bear? All this is sheer, brute, uncompre-
hended fact, of which no philosophy since Hegel's has had
the folly to essay an a priori explanation. But little we
care, or scientifically need care, so long as it all happens
with a ' mechanical ' regularity which can be accurately
calculated.

It is convenient, therefore, to assume that the inorganic
is the realm of rigid mechanism and devoid of every trace
of spontaneous spirit. But this is an assumption which
is strictly indemonstrable. The regularity to which we
trust is no adequate proof. For, taken in large masses,
human actions show a similar constancy. Averages
remain regular and calculable, even though their individual
components may vary widely and incalculably from the
mean. Under stable and normal conditions of society

xvm FREEDOM 415

the statistics of births, marriages, and deaths do not vary
appreciably from year to year. Yet some of these events
are usually set down to individual choices.

Now in observing the inorganic we are dealing with
the world's constituents in very large numbers. Physical
and chemical experiments operate with many thousands
and millions of millions at a time. The least speck
visible under the microscope is composed of atoms by the
million. Consequently the regularity we observe may
very well be that of an average. If, then, a single atom
here or there displayed its extraordinary intelligence or
original perverseness by refusing to do as the rest, how
pray should it ever be detected by us ? How should we
ever suspect that the process rested upon choice and was
not utterly mechanical ?

Thirdly, it must be borne in mind that we may fail to
observe the differences in the behaviour of individual
atoms or electrons merely because our experiments are
too ignorant and clumsy to discriminate between them,
so as to tempt some, without alluring others. Their
complete qualitative identity is inferred from experiments
which are as crude and barbarous as would be experi-
ments which concluded to the non-existence of human
individuality from the fact that when men were hurled
over a precipice in large quantities they were all equally
dashed to pieces.

How coarse our methods are we usually discover only
when they are improved. Thus it long seemed inexplicable
how a grain of musk could retain its fragrance for years
without sensibly losing weight, if this quality really rested
on the emission of particles ; but this mystery is now to
a large extent solved by the discovery of radio-activity.
It has turned out that the electroscope is a far more
delicate instrument than the most sensitive balance, which
remains unaffected by the violent propulsion of electrons
which accompanies the disruption of atomic matter. And
so the whole doctrine of the indestructibility of matter
may be radically wrong, and its apparent proofs due
merely to the roughness of our former measurements. In

4i6 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvm

experimenting with radium we have managed to select
those ' atoms ' which are nearing their explosive end, and
to concentrate them until their death agonies grow visible
to us ; but concerning the generation of atoms we are still
in the dark, though we suspect a good deal, enough at
any rate to entertain the idea that the constancy of matter
may be merely the stability of an average. Similarly it
is possible that long-continued fractionations might sift
out the chief individual differences in all the chemical
' elements.' It is therefore quite fallacious to infer that
things have a rigid and unalterable nature, because they
show their indifference to us by reacting alike to modes
of treatment which to our eyes seem different. In view
of our ignorance of their inner nature this may only show
that differences which seem important to us do not seem
important to them.^

Deficient as our observations are in delicacy, they are
still more deficient in endurance. The evidence that the
* laws ' of nature remain really constant is hardly complete
even for the last few centuries. The discrepancies, for
example, between the historically recorded and the retro-
spectively calculated eclipses of the sun and the moon are
too great to be compatible with existence of our present
planetary orbits even a few centuries ago.^ To explain
them we have to choose between the assumptions that our
records are false, that the moon is slowly escaping us, that
the earth's diurnal rotation is slowing down, that the sun's
motion or attraction is altering, or that the law of gravita-
tion is changing, or whatever combination of these and
other hypotheses we can devise to fit the facts more
nearly. To guide that choice we have only the vague
methodological maxim that it is well to try first such
hypotheses as involve the least disturbance of the accepted
system of science. But even the greatest readjustments
may be needed. If now we supposed the primary laws
of nature to be changing slowly and continuously, most of

^ Cp. Humanism, p. ii, note.

^ See an article on "Ancient Eclipses" by Prof. P. H. Cowell in Nature,
No. 1905.

xvm FREEDOM 417

the evidence which is now held to imply their rigid
constancy would be seen to be inconclusive. Thus even
in the inorganic world habits might be plastic and ' laws '
might be gradually evolving.

If this be so, it is, moreover, clear that we ourselves
might take a part in determining this evolution. Our
operations might induce things to develop their habits in
one way rather than another, and so we should literally
be altering the laws of nature. It is even permissible to
surmise that we may already sometimes have accom-
plished this. The chemist, for example, seems often so
to play upon the acquired habits of his substances as
to bring into existence compounds which but for him
would never have existed, and never could have existed
in a state of nature. And so he may induce new
habits ; for once these combinations have been formed,
they may leave permanent traces on the natures that
take part in them, and so alter their ' affinities ' for the
future.

The speculations whereby we have illustrated the
possibility that individuality, plasticity, and freedom may
pervade also the inorganic world will seem wild and
unfamiliar. But they are such that science may some day
verify them, if they are looked for. At present we blind
ourselves to their possibility by making the methodo-
logical assumptions of determinism and mechanism. But
it should be clearly confessed that it is entirely possible
that the world may now be, and may always have been,
such as to contain a certain indetermination throughout
its structure, which we have only failed to discover because
we have closed our eyes to it, in order to have a more
easily calculable universe. If, however, this postulate is
modified so that ' free ' acts also are conceived as calculable,
our eyes may be opened, as it were by magic, and the
evidences of * freedom ' may everywhere pop up and stare
us in the face.

§ 12. We come at last to the ultimate metaphysical
advantages and disadvantages of the belief in Freedom
which we have developed. That it has its drawbacks is

2 E

41 8 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvm

fairly obvious. Indeterminism, even when it has been
tamed, i.e. limited, and rendered calculable and determin-
able, still means chance ; and chance means risk ; and
risk, though it seems inseparable from life, means a
possibility of failure. Our craven instincts, therefore,
our indolence, our diffidence, will always demand an
assurance of salvation, a universe which cannot go astray,
but is predestined to be perfect.

The prejudices thus engendered are probably among
the strongest of the secret motives which inspire the
absolutist's aversion from Pragmatism. As Prof Muir-
head opportunely confesses, the admission of contingency
seems to turn the universe into " a joint-stock enterprise
under God and Co., Limited, without insurance against
accident'' ^ and this would be very much of a pis aller
to predestinate perfection.

But is predestinate perfection possible or really think-
able ? And what is the ' insurance against accident '
offered us by the agents of the Absolute really and truly
worth ?

If the universe as we know it is predestined to any-
thing, it is predestined to go on as it is upon its fatal
course. For the universe, we are assured, contains no
free agents, human or divine, to work out beneficial trans-
formations in its nature. It is predestined, therefore, to
be an unmeaning dance of cosmic matter, diversified at
intervals by catastrophes, as blind blundering suns go
crashing into each other's systems and make holocausts
of the values and polities which some powerless race
of planetary pygmies has painfully evolved. It is
predestined to a fate which nothing can avert, which
no one can mitigate or improve.

And to make our ' insurance ' doubly sure, we are
furthermore assured that this universe, which extorts its
tribute of tears from every feeling breast, is already perfect,
if only we could see it — which being necessarily ' finite '
we cannot ! There is not, therefore, the slightest reason
why, for finite minds, the universe should ever seem, or

1 Hihbert Journal, vol. iv. p. 460. Italics mine.

XVIII FREEDOM 419

become, more satisfactory than now it is. The absolutist
in his determinism at bottom entirely agrees with
Mephistopheles —

Glaub' unser einem dieses Ganze
1st nur fiir einen Gott gemacht.

The only boon which his view ' insures ' us is that a
world which with all its faults had seemed plastic and
improvable, becomes a hopeless hell for the wanton and
superfluous torture of helpless * finite ' beings, whose doom
was predestined from all eternity !

For my part, I should prefer a universe marred by
chance to such a certainty. For the * chance ' in this
case means a chance of improvement. Of course a world
that was really perfect in a simple and human way, and
was incapable of declining from that perfection because
it contained no indetermination, would be better still.
But such a world ours plainly is not, though it has a
chance of developing such perfection by becoming wholly
harmonious and determinate. And is it not ' assurance '
enough for all reasonable requirements that in a world
wholly harmonized no one could upset its harmony nor
have any motive for changing his habits and the way of
the world ?

There remains to be discussed the metaphysical
objection to the conception of indetermination which was
postponed in § 9. It is at bottom an objection to the
reality of change in ultimate reality, to the notion of its
incompleteness and development. It is, however, merely a
survival of Eleatic prejudice, and the simplest way to dispose
of it is by a demand for its credentials. For why should
it be taken as certain a priori \}cy3X the real cannot change ?
All we know about reality negatives this notion. And if
our immediate experience is not to convince us of the
reality of change, of what can anything convince us ? Or
if it is claimed that the impossibility of change can be
made dialectically evident by a priori reasoning from
ideas, our reply will be that, if so, the ideas in question
must be faulty. For our ideas should be formed to

420 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xvm

understand experience, not to confute it. Ideas which
are inapplicable are invalid. Ideas which contradict
experience are either false, or in need of verification by
the altering of the reality which contradicts them. In
short, it is vain to threaten libertarians with the meta-
physical terrors of what James calls 'the block-universe.'
That conception is usually mystical, when it is not a
materialistic corollary from an obsolescent physics ; it
can never be really thought out in metaphysics except
into sheer, unmitigated Eleaticism. And, as in Zeno's time,
the puzzle ' solvitur ambulando ' by those who really wish
to know : we leave it aside and pass on.

To sum up ; our Freedom is really such as it appears ;
it consists in the determinable indetermination of a nature
which is plastic, incomplete, and still evolving. These
features pervade the universe ; but they do not make it
unintelligible. Nay, they are the basis of its perfecti-
bility.

XIX
THE MAKING OF REALITY

ARGUMENT

I. Hegel's great idea of a thought process which was to be also the cosmic
process spoilt by his dehumanizing of the former. The false abstractions
of the ' Dialectic ' from time and personality lead to its impotence to
explain either process. § 2. Humanism renews Hegel's enterprise by
conceiving the ' making of truth ' to be also a ' making of reality,' Its
epistemological validity. § 3. The problem of a metaphysical ' making
of reality.' § 4. Its difficulties, (i) Can reality be wholly engendered
by our operations ? (2) Can the Pragmatic Method yield a metaphysic ?
§ 5. Even epistemologically we must (i) distinguish between 'discover-
ing ' and ' making ' reality. The distinction may mark the division
between Pragmatism and Humanism. But it is itself pragmatic, and in
some cases the difference between ' making ' and ' finding ' becomes
arbitrary. § 6. (2) The great difference between original and final
' truth ' and * fact ' in the process which validates ' claims ' and makes
' realities.' The pragmatic unimportance of starting-points. Initial
truth as ' sheer claim ' and initial fact as mere potentiality. Their
methodological worthlessness. § 7. (3) The methodological nullity and
metaphysical absurdity of the notion of an 'original fact.' Ultimate
reality something to be looked forward, and not back, to. § 8. The
transition of metaphysics. Humanism and metaphysics. § 9. Four
admitted ways in which the ' making of truth ' involves a ' making of
reality.' A fifth, knowing makes reality by altering the knowers,
who are real. § 10. But is the object known also altered, and so
' made ' ? Where the object known is not aware it is known, it is
treated as 'independent,' because knowing seems to make no difference.
Fallaciousness of the notion of mere knowing. Knowing as a pre-
lude to doing. § II. The apparent absence of response to our cognitive
operations on the part of ' things,' due to their lack of spiritual com-
munion with us. But really they do respond to us as physical bodies,
and are affected by us as such. § 12. Hylozoism or panpsychism as
a form of Humanism. ' Catalytic action ' and its human analogues.
§ 13. Hence there is real making of reality by us out of plastic facts.
§ 14. The extent of the plasticity of fact, practically and methodologi-
cally. § 15. Non-human making of reality. § 16. Two indispensable
assumptions : (i) the reality of freedom or determinable indetermination,
and (2) § 17, the incompleteness of reality, as contrasted with the
Absolutist notion of an eternally complete whole, which renders our
whole world illusory.

421

422 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xix

§ I. It was a great thought of Hegel's^ that truth and
reality, logic and metaphysics, belonged together and
must not be separated, and that, to make the world truly
intelligible, the making of truth and the making of
reality must be made to coincide. He tried, therefore, to
conceive the cosmic process as one with the thought
process, and to represent all the events which happened
in the real evolution of the world in time as incidents in
the self-development of a ' dialectical process ' in which
the Absolute Idea arrived at a full logical comprehension
of its own eternal meaning.

But, unfortunately, he spoilt this great idea (with which
Dr. McTaggart alone of his English followers seems to con-
cern himself) in the execution. He tried to conceive thought
as out of time, and its ' eternity ' as higher than the time-
process of reality, and as containing the ' truth ' and
meaning of the latter. But this equation of the eternal
' logic-process ' with the temporal ' cosmic process ' did not
work out to a real solution. The one was eternally
complete, the other manifestly incomplete ; and no real
correspondence could be established between their re-
spective terms.^ Moreover, the real events of the cosmic
process stubbornly refused to be reduced to mere illus-
trations of a dialectical relation of ' categories,' and the
desperate attempt of the ' Dialectic ' to declare the surplus
of meaning, which the real possessed over the logical, to
be really a defect, to be mere meaningless ' contingency '
which reason could not, and need not, account for, was
really a covert confession of its fundamental failure.

This failure, moreover, was really an inevitable con-
sequence of its own fundamental assumptions. It
had begun by misconceiving the ' thought - process,'
which was to be its clue to reality. It had begun
by abstracting from its concrete nature, from the
actual thinking of human beings. It had begun, that is,
by misconceiving the function of abstraction. It had
begun, in short, by dehumanizing thought in order to

1 Or rather of Fichte's ; but Hegel appropriated
^ Cp. Hiimanism, ch. vi.

XIX THE MAKING OF REALITY 423

make it more adequate to ultimate reality. But the
result was that it destroyed the real link between reality
and thought. For it is only as concrete human thinking
that we know thought to be a real process at all. Once
this link is severed, once the human side of thought is
flung aside as meaningless and worthless, thought per se,
however ' absolute ' and ' ideal ' and * eternal ' we may
call it, is wafted away from earth into the immense
inanity of abstractions which have lost touch with a
reality to which they can never again be applied.

This fate has overtaken the ' Dialectic' The self-
development of its ' categories ' is not the real develop-
ment of any actual thought. It is not, consequently,
the real explanation of any actual process. It still
bears a sort of ghostly resemblance to our concrete
thinking, to the body of incarnate truth from which it
was abstracted ; and, therefore, it can still claim a
shadowy relevance to the real events of life. But it is too
abstract ever to grasp either thoughts or events in their
full concreteness. Thus its claim to predict events is very
like the weather prophecies in ZadkiePs Almanac — so
vaguely worded that almost anything may be said to con-
firm it. But it can never suggest any definite reason
why definite persons at any definite time should think
just those thoughts which they think, or use just the
categories which they use, rather than any other. It
can never allege any reason why events should exemplify
the logical relations of the categories in the precise way
they are said to do, rather than in a dozen other ways
which would do equally well, or why, conversely, the
categories should achieve exemplification by just the
events which occur, rather than by a myriad others
which would perform this function no less well. All
such definite questions it waves aside as concerned
merely with the impenetrable ' contingency ' of the
phenomenal. Even, therefore, if we take the most
favourable view of its claims, and admit it t'o be an
explanation of everything in general, it still fails to
satisfy the demands, either of science or of practice, by

424 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xix

being too vague and too ambiguous to be the ex-
planation of anything in particular. It is truly the
" unearthly ballet of bloodless categories," Mr. Bradley
has called it, a mere Witches' Sabbath of disembodied
abstractions, from which the true seeker after the mean-
ing of reality will no more distil spiritual satisfaction
than Dr. Faustus did from the Walpurgisnacht on the
Brocken. And even as an intellectual debauch, as a
sowing of spiritual wild oats, it is better to avoid what
may so seriously confuse and debilitate the mind.

It remains, however, to show that the points at which
the Hegelian Dialectic's failure becomes patent are in
direct connexion. It fails, practically on its own show-
ing, to account for the whole of the time process, because
it fails to account for the whole of the thought process.
For it has in both cases made the same fatal abstraction.
It has assumed that because for the practical purposes
of human knowing it is convenient and possible and
sufficient to abstract from the full concreteness (' par-
ticularity ') of the Real, what we neglect, and often have
to neglect, is really meaningless. But this is not the case.
There is nothing ' accidental ' and void of significance
about the Real, nothing which a complete theory of events
can afford to ignore. The minutest ' incident ' has its
meaning, every least shade of personality its importance,
even though our limitations may practically force us
to neglect them. Such concessions may be accorded to
the humility of a pragmatic theory of knowledge : they
cannot be rendered compatible with the all-embracing
claims of a theory of absolute knowledge. Hence the
pretensions of the Dialectic to absolute completeness do
not entitle it to the arrogance of such abstractions. It
it cannot or will not explain everything, it forfeits its
claim to be ' concrete ' and to be valid. It has mis-
understood, moreover, the nature of abstraction. The
abstraction which occurs in actual thinking is human,
and not absolute ; it is relative to a restricted purpose,
and can be rectified by altering the purpose whenever
this is requisite or desirable. Abstraction, in other

XIX THE MAKING OF REALITY 425

words, is an instrument of thought, and not a good per se.
It should not be dehumanized any more than any other
feature of our thinking. And if we refrain from de-
humanizing our thought, we shall not be forced to
' de-realize ' reality in order to make it * intelligible.'

§ 2. Let us try, therefore, to renew Hegel's enterprise
of the identification of the making of truth and the
making of reality, under the better auspices of a logic
which has not disembowelled itself in its zeal to become
true. That the pragmatic theory of knowledge does
not start with any antithesis of ' truth ' and ' fact,' but
conceives ' reality ' as something which, for our knowledge
at least, grows up in the making of truth, and conse-
quently recognizes nothing but continuous and fluid tran-
sitions from hypothesis to fact and from truth to truth,
we have already seen in Essays vii. and viii. It follows
that the ' making of truth ' is also in a very real sense a
'making of reality.' In validating our claims to 'truth'
we really 'discover' realities. And we really transform
them by our cognitive efforts, thereby proving our
desires and ideas to be real forces in the shaping of
our world.

Now this is a result of immense philosophic import-
ance. For it systematically bars the way to the
persistent but delusive notion that ' truth ' and ' reality '
somehow exist apart, and apart from us, and have to be
coaxed or coerced into a union, in the fruits of which we
can somehow participate. The making of truth, it is
plain, is anything but a passive mirroring of ready-made
fact. It is an active endeavour, in which our whole
nature is engaged, and in which our desires, interests,
and aims take a leading part. Nevermore, therefore,
can the subjective making of reality be denied or ignored,
whether it be in the interests of rationalism, and in
order to reserve the making of reality for an ' absolute
thought,' or whether it be in the interests of realism, and in
order to maintain the absoluteness of an 'independent'
fact. Taken strictly for what it professes to be, the
notion of ' truth ' as a ' correspondence ' between our

426 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xix

minds and something intrinsically foreign to them, as a
mirroring of alien fact, has completely broken down.
The reality to which truth was said to * correspond,' i.e.
which it has to know, is not a ' fact ' in its own right,
which pre-exists the cognitive functioning. It is itself a
fact within knowing, immanently deposited or ' precipi-
tated ' by the functioning of our thought. The problem
of knowledge, therefore, is not — ' how can thought
engender truth about reality ? ' It is rather — ' how can
we best describe the continuous cognitive process which
engenders our systems of ' truth ' and our acceptance of
' reality ' and gradually refines them into more and
more adequate means for the control of our experience ? '
It is in this cognitive elaboration of experience that both
reality and truth grow up pari passu. ' Reality ' is reality
for us, and known by us, just as ' truth ' is truth for us.
What we judge to be ' true,' we take to be ' real,' and
accept as ' fact.' And so what was once the most
vaporous hypothesis is consolidated into the hardest
and most indubitable ' fact.' Epistemologically speaking,
therefore, so far as our knowledge goes or can go, the
making of truth and the making of reality seem to be
fundamentally one.

§ 3. But how about metaphysics ? Does this ' mak-
ing of truth ' supply a final answer to all the
questions we can ask ? This is by no means obvious.
Even on the epistemological plane the making of truth
seemed to recognize certain limitations, the exact nature
of which, being unable to pursue the subject into the
depths of metaphysics, we were not able to determine.
We had to leave it doubtful, therefore, how far a coin-
cidence of our cognitive making of truth with the real
making of reality could be traced, and whether ulti-
mately both processes could be combined in the same
conception. It seemed possible that our so-called mak-
ing of reality would not in the end amount to a revela-
tion of the ultimate essence of the cosmic process, and
that the analogies between the two would finally prove
fallacious or insufficient.

XIX THE MAKING OF REALITY 427

We postponed, therefore, the further consideration of
these questions, and have been rewarded since then by
lighting upon a number of truths which may be distinctly
helpful in a renewed attack upon our problem of the
' making of reality.'

(i) We have seen in Essay ix. § i that an evolu-
tionist philosophy ought not prematurely to commit itself
to a static view of Reality, and that it is not an ineluctable
necessity of thought, but a metaphysical prejudice, to
believe that Reality is complete and rigid and unimprov-
able, and that real change is therefore impossible. We
have thus gained the notion of a plastic, growing, in-
complete reality, and this will permit us to conceive a
' making of reality ' as really cosmic.

(2) The examination of Freedom in the last essay
(§§ 9-12) brought us once more into contact with this
idea of a really incomplete reality. For it seemed that
there might after all be a vein of indetermination running
through the universe, and that the behaviour and the
habits of things could still be altered. This idea
cropped up as a logical consequence of the reality of
human freedom, which we found it possible to maintain
on other grounds. This freedom and plasticity, moreover,
would explain and justify our treatment of our ideas as
real forces, and our claim that the ' making of truth ' was
necessarily also a making of reality. For the plasticity
of the real would explain how it was that our subjective
choices could realize alternative developments of reality.

And (3) it appeared to be possible that this plasticity
of things might involve not merely a passive acquiescence
in our manipulations, but a modicum of initiative, and
that thus ' freedom ' might not be confined to human
nature, but might in some degree pervade the universe.
If so, not only would the possibilities of 'making reality'
be vastly enlarged, but we should have established the
existence of a very real and far-reaching identity in nature
between human and non-human reality, which would
justify the expectation of very considerable likeness in the
processes by which they severally adjust themselves to

428 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xix

their environment. Accordingly, we might feel entitled
to look for analogues also to the human making of truth
and reality, and these might help to render intelligible
the vast masses of reality, which it seemed at the end of
Essay vii. we could not humanly claim to have * made.'

§ 4. Still it will not do to underrate the difficulties of
the situation. The Pragmatic Method, we have always
admitted, has definitely postulated an initial basis of fact
as the condition of its getting to work at all. And
although any particular ' fact ' can always be conceived as
having been 'made' by a previous cognitive operation,
this latter in its turn will always presuppose a prior basis
of fact. Hence, however rightly we may emphasize the
fact that what we call reality is bound up with our knowing
and dependent on our manipulations, there will always
seem to be an insuperable paradox in the notion that
reality can, as such and wholly, be engendered by the con-
sequences of our dealings with it.

Our Pragmatic Method, moreover, has so far fought
shy of metaphysics. It has pleaded that originally it
had professed to be merely epistemological in its scope,
and has gravely doubted whether metaphysics were not
for it ultra vires} It may be well, therefore, to indulge
the foibles of our method, to the extent at least of con-
sidering what more can be said about the making of reality
on strictly epistemological ground, before we transform it,
by claiming for it universal application and expanding it
to cosmic dimensions, and thereby soar to metaphysics.

§ 5. In point of fact there is a good deal more to be
said. For example, (i) the difficulty about conceiving
the acceptance of fact as the basis of the pragmatically
developed situation should be treated, not as an objection
to the Pragmatic Method, but as a means of bringing out

■^ I do not think that the text of Axioms as Postulates anywhere, even in
isolated paragraphs, entitles critics to read it in a metaphysical sense. And
certainly the whole method and purpose of that essay should have made it un-
mistakable that it was nowhere intended to be taken in any but an epistemological
sense. If so, it is beside the point to object to §§ 3-7 as not giving a
satisfactory account of the creation of the universe. Really that would have
been too much to e.xpect even from the untamed vigour of a new philosophy !
That the question under discussion referred only to our cognitive making of
reality was quite plainly stated in § 7.

XIX THE MAKING OF REALITY 429

its full significance. For it can be made to bring out the
important distinction between the reality which is ' made '
only for us, i.e. subjectively, or as we say ' discovered,' and
that which we suppose to be really ' made,' made objec-
tively and in itself. That we make this distinction is
obvious ; but why do we make it ? If both the subjective
and the objective ' making of reality ' are products of the
same cognitive process, of the same * making of truth '
by our subjective efforts, how can this distinction arise,
or, ultimately, be maintained?

Now it is clear, in the first place, that acceptance of
the Pragmatic Method in no wise compels us to ignore
this distinction. Nor does it as such compel us to assert
the ' making of reality ' in the objective sense. It seems
quite feasible to conceive the making as i^ierely subjective,
as referring only to our knowledge of reality, without
affecting its actual existence.^ Nay, the existence of the
distinction may itself legitimately be appealed to to show
that common sense draws a clear line at this point. And
so it may be denied that we ' make ' reality metaphysically,
though not that we ' make ' it epistemologically.

The validity of this position may provisionally be
admitted. Let it merely be observed that it is com-
patible with a full acceptance of Pragmatism as a method,
and even with a very extensive ' making of reality ' by
our efforts. For these efforts are still indispensable in
order that reality may be ' discovered.' It is still true
that our desires and interests must anticipate our * dis-
coveries,' and point the way to them — and that so our
conception of the world will still depend on our subjective
selection of what it interested us to discover in the
totality of existence. And of course the ' making of
reality,' in so far as we mould things to suit us, and in
so far as social institutions are real forces to be reckoned
with and potent in the moulding of men, is also unaffected
by the refusal to conceive the ultimate making of reality
as proceeding identically, or analogously, with our ' making

^ Hence it seems possible to be, e.g. , a pragmatist in epistemology, and a realist
in metaphysics, like Prof. Santayana.

430 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xix

of truth.' So that it is quite possible to be a good prag-
matist without attempting to turn one's method into a
metaphysic.

Secondly, it is clear that if the Pragmatic Method is
true, the distinction between ' discovering ' and ' making '
reality must itself have a pragmatic ground. It must be
evolved out of the cognitive process, and be validated by
its practical value. And this we find to be the case.
The distinction is a practical one, and rests on the various
behaviours of things. A reality is said to be discovered,
and not made, when its behaviour is such that it is
practically inconvenient or impossible to ascribe its reality
for us entirely to our subjective activity. And as a rule
the criteria of this distinction are plain and unmistakable.
To wish for a chair and find one, and to wish for a chair
and make one, are experiences which it is not easy to
confuse, and which involve very different operations and
attitudes on our part. In the one case, we have merely
to look around, and our trusty senses present to us the
object of our desire in effortless completion : in the other
a prolonged process of construction is required.

More verbally confusing cases arise when we have
made a claim to reality which we cannot sustain, or denied
a reality which we subsequently recognize. These cases
seerr to lend themselves to the belief in an ' independent '
reality, because in our dealings with them we do not
seem to alter ' reality,' but only our beliefs about it. The
confusion, however, is at bottom one between a reality (or
truth) which is claimed, and one which is verified. If a
claim is falsified, the new truth (or reality) which takes its
place may always be antedated, and conceived as having
existed independently of the claim which it refutes. But
it cannot be said to be similarly independent of the
process which has established it. The truth is that what
in such a case we have made is not a reality, but a
mistake. And a mistake is a claim to reality (or truth)
which will not work, and has to be withdrawn. But the
failure of a cognitive experiment is no proof that experi-
mentation is a mistake. Nor does the fact that a reality

XIX THE MAKING OF REALITY 431

existed, which we mistakenly denied, prove that it was
not ' made,' even by ourselves.

In other cases the line is not so clear, and the ' finding '
seems to involve a good deal of ' making.' Our language
itself often testifies to this. Thus we often ' find ' that
when we have ' made ' mistakes, the precise amount
of wilfulness involved in the ' making ' is difficult to
gauge. Or consider our dealings with other beings
spiritually responsive to our action. Our behaviour to
them may really determine their behaviour to us, and
make them what we believed or wanted them to be.^
Thus ' making love ' and ' finding love ' are not in general
the same. But you may make love, because you find
yourself in love, and making love may really produce love
in both parties to the suit. Few people, moreover, would
really ' find ' themselves in love, if the object of their
affections had done absolutely nothing to ' make ' them
fall in love. And every married couple has probably
discovered by experience that the reality and continuance
of their affection depends on the behaviour of both parties.

It is clear then (i) that, roughly and in the main, there
is a real pragmatic distinction between ' discovering ' and
' making ' reality. But (2) we also get some suggestive
hints that this distinction may not be absolute, and that
in our dealings with the more kindred and responsive
beings in the world our attitude towards them may be an
essential factor in their behaviour towards us. If so, we
shall have sufficient ground for the belief that our manipu-
lations may really ' make,' and not merely ' find ' reality,
and sufficient encouragement to pursue the subject farther.

§ 6. (2) In admitting that the pragmatic making of
truth always presupposed a prior basis of fact an important
point was omitted. We neglected to notice also the
great and essential difference between the nature of the
truth and the reality as it enters the process at the begin-
ning and as it emerges from it at the end. Both the truth
and the reality have been transformed. Their originally
tentative character has disappeared. The ' truth,' which

^ Cp. Humanism,, p. 12, w.

432 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xix

entered the process as a mere claim, has now been validated.
The 'reality,' which at first was a suspicion, a hope, a
desire, or a postulate, is now fully substantiated, and an
established fact. The difference wrought by the pragmatic
verification, therefore, is as great in the case of the ' reality '
as in that of the truth, and it was surely worth the whole
labour of rethinking the traditional formulas in pragmatic
terms to have had our attention drawn to its existence.

For the pragmatic theory of knowledge initial principles
are literally ap^at, mere starting-points, variously, ar-
bitrarily, casually selected, from which we hope and try
to advance to something better. Little we care what their
credentials may be, provided that they are able to conduct
us to firmer ground than that from which we were fain to
start. We need principles that work, not principles that
possess testimonials from the highest a priori quarters.
Even though, therefore, their value was prospective and
problematical, they were accepted for the services they
proffered. For we knew better than to attach undue
importance to beginnings, than to seek for principles self-
evident, and realities undeniable to start with.^ We
divined from the first that truth and reality in the fullest
sense are not fixed foundations, but ends to be achieved.

Consequently, the question about the nature of initial
truth and reality cannot be allowed to weigh upon our
spirits. We have not got to postpone knowing until we
have discovered them. For actual knowing always starts
from the existing situation.^ Even, therefore, if we fail to
penetrate to such absolute beginnings our theory can
work. And it is not disposed to regard initial facts or
truths as specially important, even if they could be
ascertained. Indeed our method must treat them as
conceptual limits to which actual cognition points, but
which it never rests on. Initial truth it will regard as
sheer claim, unconfirmed as yet by any sort of experience,
and undiscriminatingly inclusive of truth and falsehood.
A really a priori truth, ix. a claim which really preceded
all experience, would be as likely to be false as true when

1 Cp. Essay ix. § 9. ^ Cp. Essay vii. § 3.

XIX THE MAKING OF REALITY 433

it was applied. It has no value, therefore, for a theory of
knowledge which is wishful to discriminate between true
and false. Initial reality, similarly, would be sJieer
potentiality, the mere vK-t) of what was destined to develop
into true reality. And whatever value metaphysics may
attach to them, the theory of knowledge can make
nothing of sheer claims and mere potentialities. Methodo-
logically we may and must assume that every truth and
every reality now recognized is to be conceived as evolved
from the cognitive process in which we now observe it,
and as destined to have a further history.

For if we declined to treat it so, we should lose much
and gain nothing. We should gratuitously deprive our-
selves of the right of improving on the imperfect and
unsatisfactory realities and truths which we now have.
By conceiving them as rigid, i.e. as fixed and unalterable
from the beginning, we should merely debar ourselves
from discovering that after all they were plastic, if such
chanced to be their nature. If, on the other hand, they
chanced to be rigid, we should not be put to shame ; we
should merely suppose that we had not yet found the
way to bend them to our will. The sole methodological
principle, therefore, which will serve our purpose and
minister to a desire for progressive knowledge is that
which conceives no reality as so rigid and no truth as so
valid as to be constitutionally incapable of being improved
on, when and where our purposes require it. We may be
de facto quite unable to effect such an improvement. But
why should that compel us to forbid effort and to close
the door to hope for all eternity ?

To sum up then : even though the Pragmatic Method
implies a truth and a reality which it does not make, yet it
does not conceive them as valuable. It conceives them only
as indicating limits to our explanations, and not as reveal-
ing the solid foundations whereon they rest. All effective
explanation, however, starts from the actual process of
knowing, which is pragmatic, and not from hypothetical
foundations, which are dubious. And all effective truth
and reality result from the same pragmatic process.

2 F

434 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xix

§ 7 (S)' It is clear, then, that we have, on methodo-
logical grounds, a certain right to demur to the demand for
an explanation of the initial basis of fact. It is quite true
that our method logically implies a previous fact as its
datum. But it is also true that since any determinate char-
acter in a ' fact ' may be conceived, and must be assumed,
to have been derived, this original datum is reduced for us
in principle to a mere potentiality, an indeterminate
possibility of what is subsequently made of it. And so
methodologically, as we saw in the last section, it need not
trouble us, because we are concerned, not with presupposi-
tions, but with ends.

It is only, however, when this notion of an original
fact is translated into the language of metaphysics that
its methodological nullity is fully revealed. When the
doctrine of the making of reality out of a relatively
indeterminate material is construed metaphysically, and
pushed back to the ' beginning,' it seems to assert the
formation of the Real out of a completely indeterminate
Chaos, of which nothing can be said save that it was
capable of developing the determinations it lias developed
under the operations which were performed upon it.

But how, it is asked, with a fine show of indignation, by
philosophers who have forgotten Plato's Se^afiivt] and the
creation stories of all the religious mythologies from the
book of Genesis downwards, can such a notion be
put forward as a serious explanation ? How can a
wholly indeterminate ' matter ' be determined by experi-
ment ? What would any experiment have to go upon ?
By what means could it operate ? And why should the
' matter ' react in one way rather than in any other ?
And then, without awaiting a reply or crediting us with
any awareness of some of the oldest and least venerable
of metaphysical puzzles, they hastily jump to the con-
clusion that Pragmatism has no real light to throw on the
making of reality, and that they may just as well revert to
the cover of their ancient formulas.

It is, however, from their conclusion only that we
should dissent. We may heartily agree that these

XIX THE MAKING OF REALITY 435

questions should be put in a metaphysical sense, if only
in order that it may be seen what their answers would
involve. We may agree also to some of their terms. It
is obvious, for example, that to derive reality from chaos
is not seriously to explain it. But then we never said or
supposed it was. On the other hand we should not admit,
at least not without cause alleged, that because a thing is
indeterminate it is necessarily indeterminable, or that if it
is indeterminate, it must be conceived as infinitely so,
merely because we are not able before the event to predict
in what ways it will show itself determinable. We shall
plead, in short, the doctrine that the accomplished fact has
logical rights over the ' original ' fact.

Still Chaos is no explanation. This is just our reason
for the methodological scruple about the whole notion of
expecting a complete metaphysical explanation of the
universe from the pragmatic analysis of knowledge. It
may reasonably be contended that the whole question is
invalid because it asks too much. It demands to know
nothing less than how Reality comes to be at all, how
fact is made absolutely. And this is more that any
philosophy can accomplish or need attempt. In
theological language, it is to want to know how God
made the world out of nothing. Nay it includes a
demand to know how God made himself out of nothing !
But this is not only a question to which we are never
likely to get an answer, but also one which, as Lotze
wisely remarked, is logically inadmissible. For it ignores
the facts that something must be taken for granted in all
explanation, and that the world, just as we have it now,
is the presupposition de facto of every question we ask
about it, including those as to its past and its ' origin.'
Thus in a methodological sense the existing world, with
its pragmatic situation, is the necessary presupposition of
the original datum from which it is held to be derived.

Moreover, even if per ivipossibile the demand could
somehow be satisfied, and we could learn how the first
fact was made, there is no reason to think that the pro-
cedure would strike us as particularly ' rational ' or

436 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xix

enlightening, or that this ' knowledge ' would leave us any
the wiser. It would certainly appear to have been a
making of something out of nothing. And the first
' something ' would probably seem something despicable
or disgusting. It would very likely look to us like the
primordial irruption into the world we now have of that
taint of corruption, evil, or imperfection, which philo-
sophers have tried so often to think, and so rarely to do,
away.

The fact is that the conception of ultimate reality
looks forward, and not back, and must do so (like
Orpheus) if it is to rescue our life from the house of
Hades. It cannot be separated from that of ultimate
satisfaction.^ We can conceive ourselves, therefore, as
getting an answer to the question about the beginning of
the world-process only at the end. And it will be no
wonder if by that time we should have grown too wise
and too well satisfied to want to raise the question. To
us, at least, it is no paradox that a psychological inability
or unwillingness to raise a problem may also be its only
logical solution. When Perfection has been attained, the
universe, having at last become harmonious and truly one,
will perforce forget its past in order to forget its sufferings.
For us, meanwhile, it should suffice to think that Perfec-
tion may be attained.^

To reject this would be to allow the validity of
von Hartmann's objection to the existence of a God on
the ground that, if he were conscious, he would go mad
over trying to understand the mystery of his own exist-
ence. Von Hartmann infers that the Absolute must
be unconscious ; but even that does not apparently
prevent it from going mad, as we saw in Essay xi.

The objection, therefore, which has troubled us so
long may now finally be put aside. Methodologically an
original fact is unimportant, because it is unknowable,
and because no actual fact need be treated as original.

^ Cp. Humanism, pp. 200-3.

^ Cp. Essay vii. § 12, s.f. Humanism, ch. xi. s.f., ch. xii., § 3-6, § 8 ; Personal
Idealism, p. 109; Riddles of the Sphinx , ch. xii.

XIX THE MAKING OF REALITY 437

The demand to know it, moreover, is invalid, and cannot
be satisfied by any philosophy in any real way. * Original
fact ' is a metaphysical impostor. For it could be the
explanation of nothing, not even of itself. And, lastly,
we now perceive that the way to satisfy what is legitimate
in the demand is, not by conceiving an original fact, but
by conceiving a final satisfaction.

§ 8. The only obstacle, therefore, which can still
impede our progress on our projected excursion into meta-
physics, is that which arises from the native reluctance of
the Pragmatic Method itself to sanction such adventures.
But at this point we may bethink ourselves that this
method itself is not final. We have conceived it from
the first as included in, and derivative from, a larger
method, which may show itself more obliging. Our
Pragmatism, after all, was but an aspect of our Human-
ism.^ And Humanism, though itself only a method,
must surely be more genial. It cannot but look
favourably on an attempt thoroughly to humanize the
world and to unify the behaviour of its elements, by
tracing the occurrence of something essentially analogous
to the human making of reality throughout the universe.
Nor will it severely repress us, when we try to answer
any question of real human interest, on the ground of its
metaphysical character.

For ' metaphysics,' it will say, ' though adventures,
and so hazardous, are not unbecoming or unmanly. There
is not really much harm in them, provided that they are
not made compulsory, that no one is compelled to
advance into them farther than he likes, and that every
one perceives their real character and does not allow
them to delude him. The worst that can happen to you
is that you should find yourself unable to advance, or to
reach the summit of your hopes. If so, you can always
retire with safety, and be no worse off than if you had
never attempted an enterprise too great for your powers.
So, too, if you grow tired. What alone renders meta-
physics offensive and dangerous are the preposterous

^ Cp. Humanism, preface, § 3.

438 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xix

pretensions sometimes made on their behalf. For, so far
from being the most certain of the sciences (as is their
proud aspiration), they are de facto the most tentative, just
because they ought to be the most inclusive. Every new
fact and advance in knowledge, and every new variation
of personality, may upset a system of metaphysics. You
must not, therefore, grow fanatical about your metaphysi-
cal affirmations, but hold them with a candid and constant
willingness to revise them, and to evacuate your positions
when they become untenable. And after all, you have
always a safe fortress to retire upon if the worst should
come to the worst. If the objective " making of reality "
should prove illusory, you can take refuge with the
subjective making of reality which the Pragmatic Method
has quite clearly established.'

Thus encouraged, let us see how far a real making of
reality can be predicated of our world.

§ 9. Dare we affirm, then, that our making of truth
really alters reality, that mere knowing makes a differ-
ence, that things are changed by the mere fact of being
known ? Or rather, to elicit more precise responses, let
us ask in what cases these things may be affirmed ?

For we have seen ^ that in some cases these assertions
are plainly true, and refer only to facts which should have
been noticed long ago, and which the Pragmatic Method
has now firmly established. Thus (i) our making of truth
really alters * subjective ' reality. It first * makes ' real
objects of interest and inquiry by judicious selection from
a larger whole. This purposive analysis of the given flux
is the most indispensable condition of all knowing, and
has been wholly overlooked. It is of necessity * arbitrary '
and ' risky,' as being selective. (2) It so thoroughly
humanizes all knowing that any ' realities ' we ' find ' to
satisfy our interests and inquiries are subtly pervaded and
constituted by relations to our (frequently unconscious)
preferences. (3) Our knowledge, zvJie^i applied, alters
' real reality,' and is not real knowledge, if it cannot
be applied. Moreover, (4), in some cases, e.g. in human

1 Essay vii. § 13.

XIX THE MAKING OF REALITY 439

intercourse, a subjective making is at the same time a
real making of reality. Human beings, that is, are really
afifected by the opinion of others. They behave
differently, according as their behaviour is observed or
not, as e.g. in ' stage fright,' or in ' showing off.' Even
the mere thought that their behaviour may be known
alters it. As we saw in § 5, the difference between
' making ' and ' discovering ' reality tends in their case to
get shadowy.

Still none of this has amounted to what we must now
proceed to point out, viz. (5) that mere knoiving always
alters reality, so far at least as one party to the transaction
is concerned. Knowing always really alters the knower ;
and as the knower is real and a part of reality, reality is
really altered. Even, therefore, what we call a mere
' discovery ' of reality involves a real chaftge in us, and a
real enlightenment of our ignorance. And inasmuch as
this will probably induce a real difference in our sub-
sequent behaviour, it entails a real alteration in the
course of cosmic events, the extent of which may be
considerable, whilst its importance may be enormous.

§ 10. But what about the other party to the cognitive
transaction, the ' object ' known ? Can that be conceived
as altered by being known and so as ' made ' by the
process ?

Common sense, plainly, may demur to asserting this,
at least in the ordinary sense of ' knowing.' Often the
objects known do not seem to be visibly altered by mere
knowing, and we then prefer to speak of them as ' indepen-
dent ' facts, which our knowing merely * discovers.' This is
the simple source of the notion of the ' independent reality'
which the metaphysics of absolutism and realism agree in
misinterpreting as an absence of dependence upon human
experience. But we have already seen (§5) that the dis-
tinction between ' making ' and ' discovering ' is essentially
pragmatic, and cannot be made absolute : we must now
examine further, when, and under what conditions, it may
be alleged.

Whether a reality is called * independent ' of our

440 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xix

knowing, and said to be merely ' discovered ' when it is
known, or not, seems to depend essentially on whether it
is aware of being known ; or rather on how far, and in
what ways, it is aware of being known.

Beings who are in close spiritual communion with us,
and thoroughly aware of the meaning of our operations,
show great sensitiveness to our becoming aware of them.
When we cognize them, and recognize their reality, they
react suitably and with a more or less complete comprehen-
sion of our action. Such awareness is shown, e.g. by our
fellow-men and by such animals as are developed enough
to take note of us, and to have their actions disturbed
and altered by our knowing, or even by the thought
that we may have noticed them. It is amusing to note,
for example, how a marmot will show his perturbation
and whistle his shrill warning, long before the casual
intruder on his Alpine solitudes has suspected his exist-
ence.

But how does this apply to the lowest animals and to
inanimate things ? They surely are quite indifferent to
our knowledge of them ? To them mere knowing makes
no difference.

This case looks, plainly, different, and language is
quite right to distinguish them. But before we deal with
it we must elucidate the notion of ' mere knowing.'
Mere knowing does not seem capable of altering reality,
merely because it is an intellectualistic abstraction, which,
strictly speaking, does not exist. In the pragmatic con-
ception, however, knowing is a prelude to doing. What
is called ' mere knowing,' is conceived as a fragment of
a total process, which in its unmutilated integrity always
ends in an action which tests its truth. Hence to
establish the bearing on reality of the making of truth,
we must not confine ourselves to this fragmentary ' mere
knowing,' but must consider the whole process as com-
pleted, i.e. as issuing in action, and as sooner or later
altering reality.

Now that this pragmatic conception of knowing is the
one really operative, the one which really underlies our

XIX THE MAKING OF REALITY 441

behaviour, is shown by the actions of beings who display
sensitiveness to our observation. The actor who exhibits
stage fright is not afraid of mere observation. He is
afraid of being hissed, and perhaps of being pelted.
And the marmot who whistles in alarm is not afraid
of merely having his procedures noted down by a
scientific observer : he is afraid of being killed. Neither
the one nor the other would care about a mere
spectator who really did nothing but observe. If such
a being really existed, and Plato's intellectualistic ideal
were realized, he would be the most negligible thing in
the universe. But knowing is pragmatic, and ' mere '
knowing is a fable. And, therefore, it is terrible, and
potent to make and unmake reality. It was not for
nothing that the gods kept Prometheus chained : it is not
for nothing, though it is in vain, that Intellectualism tries
to muzzle Pragmatism.

§ II. For one being to take note of another and to
show itself sensitive to that other's operations, it must be
aware of that other as capable of affecting its activities
(whether for good or for evil), and so, as potentially
intrusive into its sphere of existence. Man is sensitive
to man because man can affect the life of man in so
many ways. Hence the variety of our social reactions
and the wealth of our social relations. But consider the
relations of man and the domestic animals. The range
of mutual response is very much contracted. Newton's
dog Diamond, though no doubt he loved his master, had
no reverence for the discoverer of gravitation. He in
return had no appreciation of the rapture of a rabbit
hunt. The marmot, similarly, conceives man only as a
source of danger. Hence the simplicity of his reaction,
just a whistle and a scurry. Why then should we search
for anything more recondite in order to account for the
apparent absence of response to our operations when we
come to deal with beings who are no longer capable of
apprehending us as agents ? This would merely mean
that they were too alien to us and our interests to concern
themselves about us. Their indifference would only

442 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xix

prove that we could not interfere with anything they
cared about, and so that they treated us as non-existent.
We, too, treat their feelings, if they have any, as non-
existent, because we cannot get at them, and they seem
to make no difference in their behaviour.

But is this absence of response absolutely real ? A
stone, no doubt, does not apprehend us as spiritual
beings, and to preach to it would be as fruitless (though
not as dangerous) as preaching to deaf ears. But does
this amount to saying that it does not apprehend us
at all, and takes no note whatever of our existence ?
Not at all ; it is aware of us and affected by us on the
plane on which its own existence is passed, and quite
capable of making us effectively aware of its existence
in our transactions with it. The ' common world ' shared
in by us and the stone is not, perhaps, on the level of
ultimate reality. It is only a physical world of ' bodies,'
and ' awareness ' in it can apparently be shown only by
being hard and heavy and coloured and space-filling,
and so forth. And all these things the stone is, and
recognizes in other ' bodies.' It faithfully exercises all
the physical functions, and influences us by so doing.
It gravitates and resists pressure, and obstructs ether
vibrations, etc., and makes itself respected as such a body.
An i it treats us as if of a like nature with itself, on the
level of its understanding, i.e. as bodies to which it is
attracted inversely as the square of the distance, moder-
ately hard and capable of being hit. That we may also
be Imrt it does not know or care. But in the kind of
cognitive operation which interests it, viz. that which
issues in a physical manipulation of the stone, e.g. its use
in house-building, it plays its part and responds according
to the measure of its capacity. Similarly, if ' atoms '
and ' electrons ' are more than counters of physical
calculation, they too know us, after their fashion. Not
as human beings, of course, but as whirling mazes of
atoms and electrons like themselves, which somehow
preserve the same general pattern of their dance, influ-
encing them and reciprocally influenced. And let it not

XIX THE MAKING OF REALITY 443

be said that to operate upon a stone is not to know it.
True, to throw a stone is not usually described as a
cognitive operation. But it presupposes one. For to
throw it, we must know that it is a stone we throw, and
to some extent what sort of a stone it is. Throwing a
pumice-stone, e.g. requires a different muscular adjust-
ment from throwing a lump of lead. Thus, to use and
to be used includes to know and to be known. That it
should seem a paradox to insist on the knowledge
involved even in the simplest manipulations of objects,
merely shows how narrow is the intellectualistic notion
of knowledge into which we have fallen.

§12.' But is not this sheer hylozoism ? ' somebody
will cry. What if it is, so long as it really brings out a
genuine analogy ? The notion that ' matter ' must be
denounced as ' dead ' in order that * spirit ' may live, no
longer commends itself to modern science. And it ought
to commend itself as little to philosophy. For the
analogy is helpful so long as it really renders the
operations of things more comprehensible to us, and
interprets facts which had seemed mysterious. We need
not shrink from words like ' hylozoism,' or (better)
' panpsychism,' provided that they stand for interpretations
of the lower in terms of the higher. For at bottom they
are merely forms of Humanism, — attempts, that is, to make
the human and the cosmic more akin, and to bring them
closer to us, that we may act upon them more successfully.

And there is something in such attempts. They can
translate into the humanly intelligible facts which have
long been known. For example, we have seen (§ 11)
that in a very real sense a stone may be said to know us
and to respond to our manipulation, nay, that this sense
is truer than that which represents knowing as unrelated
to doing. Again, there is a common phenomenon in
chemistry called ' catalytic action.' It has seemed mysteri-
ous and hard to understand that although two bodies, A
and B, may have a strong affinity for each other, they
should yet refuse to combine until a mere trace of an
' impurity,' C, is introduced, and sets up an interaction

444 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xix

between A and B, which yet leaves C unaltered. But
is not this strangely suggestive of the idea that A and
B did not know each other until they were introduced
by C, and then liked each other so well that poor C was
left out in the cold ? More such analogies and possi-
bilities will probably be found if they are looked for, and
in any case we should remember that all our physical
conceptions rest ultimately on human analogies suggested
by our immediate experience.

It is hardly true, then, that inanimate ' things ' take no
notice of our ' knowing,' and are unaltered by it. They
respond to our cognitive operations on the level on
which they apprehend them. That they do not respond
more intelligently, and so are condemned by us as
' inanimate,' is due to their immense spiritual remoteness
from us, or perhaps to our inability to understand them,
and the clumsiness and lack of insight of our manipula-
tions, which afford them no opportunity to display their
spiritual nature.

§ I 3. Even, however, on the purely physical plane on
which our transactions with other bodies are conducted,
there is response to our cognitive manipulation which
varies with our operation, and therefore there is real
making of reality by us.

Even physically, therefore, ' facts ' are not rigid and
immutable. Indeed, they are never quite the same for
any two experiments. The facts we accept and act on
are continually transformed by our very action, and so
the results of our efforts can slowly be embodied in the
world we mould. The key to the puzzle is found in
principle, once we abandon intellectualism and grasp the
true function of knowledge. For the alien world, which
seemed so remote and so rigid to an inert contemplation,
the reality which seemed so intractable to an aimless and
fruitless speculation, grows plastic in this way to our
intelligent manipulations.

§ 14. The extent of this plasticity it is, of course,
most important for us to appreciate. Practically, for
most people at most times, it falls far short of our wishes.

XIX THE MAKING OF REALITY 445

Nay, we often feel that if reality is to be remade, it
must first be unmade, that if we could only grasp the sorry
scheme of things we should shatter it to bits before remould-
ing it nearer to the heart's desire. Still, this is not the
normal attitude of man. There is usually an enormous
mass of accepted fact which we do not desire to have
remade, and which so has the sanction of our will. Other
facts it has never occurred to us to desire to remake. In
other cases, we do, indeed regard an alteration as desirable
in the abstract, but for some reason or other, perhaps
merely because we are too lazy, or too faintly interested,
or too much engrossed by more pressing needs, we do
not actually attempt to affect an alteration. The amount
of ' fact,' therefore, which it is ordinarily felt to be im-
peratively necessary to alter is comparatively small, and
this is why most people find (or ' make ' ?} life tolerable.

But whatever our actual desire and power to alter
our experience, it is an obvious methodological principle
that we must regard the plasticity of fact as adequate for
every purpose, i.e. as sufficient for the attainment of the
harmonious experience to which we should ascribe
ultimate reality. For {a) if we do not assume it, we
may by that very act, and by that act alone, as William
James has so eloquently shown, shut ourselves out from
countless goods which faith in their possibility might
realize, {h) Some facts, at least, are plastic, and others look
plastic, at least to common sense. And even though some
' facts ' do not look as if they would speedily yield to human
treatment, there is (<:) no reason in this for abandoning
our methodological principle of complete plasticity. For
a partial plasticity would be nugatory and unworkable.
If we had assumed it, it might always be declared to be
inapplicable to the case to which it was applied. And
conversely, even if we could somehow know, non-
empirically and a priori, that on some points the world
was quite inflexible, we could not use this knowledge,
because we should not know wJiat these points were.
Nor should we be entitled to infer that we had found
them out, even from our failures. For a failure, if it

446 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xix

does not discourage us, warrants nothing but the
inference that we cannot get what we want in just the
way we tried. Hence for the purposes of any particular
experiment it would still be necessary to assume that the
world was plastic. Whatever ' theoretic ' views, there-
fore, we may privately cherish as to the unalterable
rigidity of facts, we must act as if ' fact ' were as flexible
as ever is needed, if we would act effectively. And as
the principle is methodological, it would not affect or
undermine the stability of fact, wherever that was needed
for our action.

§ 15. Our position, then, as genuine makers of reality
seems to be pretty well established. We do not make
reality out of nothing, of course, i.e. we are not ' creators,'
and our powers are limited. But as yet we are only
beginning to realize them, and hardly know their full
extent ; we are only beginning cautiously to try to remake
reality, and so far (with the exception of some improvement
in domesticated plants and animals) our activities have
been mainly destructive : in every direction, however, there
seems to extend a wide field of experiments which
might be tried with a fair prospect of success. Nor do
we yet know the full extent of the co-operation which our
aims might find, or obtain, from other agents in the
universe.

For it seems clear that we are not the sole agents in
the world, and that herein lies the best explanation of
those aspects of the world, which we, the present agents, i.e.
our empirical selves, cannot claim to have made. There is
no reason to conceive these features as original and rigid.
Why should we not conceive them as having been made by
processes analogous to those whereby we ourselves make
reality and watch its making ? For, as we have seen, all
the agents in the universe are in continuous interaction,
adjusting and readjusting themselves according to the
influences brought to bear upon them. The precise
nature of these influences varies according to the character
and capacity which the various agents have acquired.
There is no need to assume any character to be original.

XIX THE MAKING OF REALITY 447

All the ' laws of nature,' in so far as they are really
objective and not merely conveniences of calculation,
may be regarded as the habits of things, and these
habits as behaviours which have grown determinate, and
more or less stable, by persistent action, but as still
capable of further determinations under the proper
manipulation,^

And lest we should be thought to limit our outlook
too narrowly to the agents which our science at present
consents to recognize, it ought also definitely to be
realized that among the agencies which we have not yet
found, because we have not yet looked, or looked only in
a half-hearted and distrustful manner, there may be a being
(or perhaps more than one) so vastly more potent than
ourselves that his part in the shaping of reality may have
been so preponderant as almost to warrant our hailing
him as a ' creator.' And again, it is possible that our own
careers, and so our own agency, may extend much farther
back into the past than now we are aware.

But these suggestions will seem wild to many, and
need not be emphasized or enlarged on. They do not
affect the conceivability of the making of reality, nor the
conceptual unity of a cosmic process in which there may
always be distinguished an aspect of what may be called
' cognition,' and another of ' action,' but in which the
thought should be conceived as subsidiary, as included,
tested and completed by the act.

§ 16. What may, however, more plausibly be thought
to affect the conception of the making of reality are two
closely connected metaphysical assumptions which we
have implied throughout. They may be called (i) the
reality of freedom or the determinable indetermination of
reality, and (2) the incompleteness of reality. Both of
these conceptions we discovered, and to some extent
justified, towards the end of the last essay (§§ 10-12).
But it may not be amiss to add a few words in justifica-
tion and confirmation of our choice.

It is evident, in the first place, that if we have no

^ Essay xviii. § ii. Formal Logic, ch. xxi. §§ 9-10.

448 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xix

freedom, and cannot choose between alternative manipula-
tions and reactions, we are not agents, and, therefore,
cannot ' make reality.' Freedom, therefore, is a postulate
of the Humanist making of reality. Strictly speaking,
however, human freedom would suffice to validate the
notion. For if we can operate alternatively, we can
initiate alternative courses of reality.

But there are no stringent reasons for confining
freedom, and the plastic indetermination of habit on
which it rests, to man alone.^ It may well be a feature
which really pervades the universe. All beings in the
world may be essentially determinable, but still partly
indeterminate, in their habits and actions. That such is
the nature of the universe may indeed be argued from
the fact that it responds variously to various modes of
handling. And once it is admitted to be partly un-
determined, it is not a question of principle how far the
indetermination goes. Many or all of the other agents
beside ourselves may be capable of more or less varying
their responses to stimulation, of acquiring and modifying
their habits. Thus the whole universe will appear to us
as literally the creature of habit, but not its slave. And
the more of this * freedom ' we can attribute to the
universe, the more plastic to good purposes we may
exr>ect to find it. For we shall expect to find habit more
rigid where intelligence is lacking to suggest readjustment
and amendment, more plastic where there is more striving
towards a better state ; and yet, on the other hand, more
stable where there is less impediment to perfect function-
ing ; but everywhere, let us hope, latently plastic enough
to render the notion of a perfect, and therefore universal,
harmony that of an attainable ideal.^

§ 17. If there is freedom in the world, and reality is
really being made, it is clear that reality is not fixed and
finished, but that the world-process is real and is still
proceeding. And so we come once more upon the
metaphysical objection to the growing, incomplete, reality
which seems to be demanded by a philosophy of Evolution.

1 Cp. Essay xviii. § 9. - Cp. Hzimanism, p. 181.

XIX THE MAKING OF REALITY 449

We have already twice challenged or defied this prejudice,^
and may this time try to vanquish it by explaining how
it comes about.

This objection springs, we may frankly admit, from
a sound methodological principle which has great prag-
matic value. When we can allege no reason why a
thing should change, we may assume that it remains the
same. Applying this maxim to the quantum of existence,
we conclude that tJie amount of being is constant. Apply-
ing it to the totality of existence, we conclude that the
universe as a whole cannot change in any real way, but
must be complete and rigid.

These two applications, however, are neither on the
same footing nor of equal value. The first yields the
sound working assumptions of the indestructibility of
' matter ' and the conservation of ' energy,' which are of
the utmost pragmatic value in physics. They are, in the
first place, the easiest assumptions to work with. For it
is far easier to make calculations with constant factors
than with variable. They are, in the second place,
applicable ; for although these principles, like all pos-
tulates, are not susceptible of complete experimental
proof, experience does not confute them by discrepancies
so great or so inexplicable as seriously to impair their
usefulness.^ In the third place, they are applied only to
those abstract aspects of physics which have shown them-
selves amenable to quantitative treatment, and in regard
to which, therefore, such treatment seems valid. The
scientific use, therefore, of the principle of constancy is
pragmatically justified by the peculiar nature of the
subject-matter to which it is applied.

But can as much be claimed for its metaphysical
double ? It is not self-evident that the quantitative
aspect of reality is of paramount authority. It is not

' Cp. Essays ix. § i, xviii. § 12.

^ Of course, however, it should be remembered that the leakage of energy,
which takes place de facto in its transformations, is only theoretically stopped by
the notion of its 'degradation' or 'dissipation.' Moreover, to conceive the
universe as ' infinite ' is really to render the postulate of conservation inap-
plicable to it. For by what test can it be known whether an infinite quantity
of matter or energj- is, or is not, ' conserved ' ?

2 G

450 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xix

easy to apply the quantitative notion to the spiritual
aspects of existence. It is very difficult to conceive a
'conservation' of spiritual values. It is still more difficult
to obtain empirical confirmation of this notion. It is
almost absurd to deny the reality of our continual
experience of change, out of deference to a metaphysical
postulate. And, lastly, every human motive urges us to
deny the completeness of Reality.

For, humanly speaking, this atrocious dogma reduces
us and our whole experience to illusion. If we think
out its demands, we must concede that nothing is really
happening ; there is no world-process, no history, no time ;
motion and change are impossible ; all our struggles and
strivings are vain. They can accomplish nothing, because
everything that truly is is already accomplished. The
sum total of Reality has been reckoned up, and there is
lacking not a single cipher. So all our hopes and our
fears, our aspirations and our desperations, do not count.
For we ourselves are illusions, we, and all our acts and
thought and troubles — all, save only, I suppose, the
thought of the rigid, timeless, motionless, changeless One,
which we have weakly postulated to redeem our experi-
ence, and which rewards us and resolves our problems by
annihilating us ! It is a pity only that it does not make a
clean job of its deadly work, that it does not wholly absorb
us in its all-embracing unity. For after all ought it not
to annihilate the illusion as well as its claim to reality ?
If we, and the time-process, and the making of reality,
are all fundamentally unreal, we ought not to be able to
seem real even to ourselves. And still less should we be
able to devise such blasphemous objections against the
One ! Somehow, not even the One knows how, the
' Illusion ' falls outside the ' Reality ' ! ^

^ Monism always ends thus. It begins by prolessing to include everything,
but ends by excluding everything. It can make nothing of any part of human
experience. Change, time, becoming, imperfection, plurality, personality, all turn
out to be for it surds incompatible with the One ; but in reducing them to nought
it disembowels itself of its whole content, and reduces itself to nothing. The
logical source of the paradox that in metaphysics i = o is that all significant
predication proceeds by analysing a given, and that so any ' real ' it extracts is
always a selection, and never the whole. A 'One,' therefore, which is not thus
contrasted with an ' other ' cannot be thought as real.

XIX THE MAKING OF REALITY 451

And for us, at all events, it is reality. For us Reality
is really incomplete ; and that it is so is our fondest hope.
For what this means is that Reality can still be remade,
and made perfect !

It is this genuine possibility, no assured promise, it is
true, nor a prophecy of smooth things, but still less a
proffer of false coin, which our Humanist metaphysic
secures to us. It does not profess to know how the
Making of Reality will end. For in a world which
contains real efforts, real choices, real conflicts, and real
evils, to the extent our world appears to do, there must be
grounds for a real doubt about the issue. We hardly
know as yet how the battle of the Giants and the Gods
is going ; we hardly know under what leader, and with
what strategy, we are contending ; we do not even know
that we shall not be sacrificed to win the day. But is
this a reason for refusing to carry on the fight, or for
denying that Truth is great and must prevail, because it
has the making of Reality ?

DREAMS AND IDEALISM^

ARGUMENT

§ I . The popularity and ambiguity of Idealism. Can Humanism be the
higher synthesis of it and realism ? § 2. A degenerate ' idealism ' which
pragmatically = a monistic realism. § 3. The drift in 'absolute ideal-
ism ' towards realism. An objection both to absolutism and realism,
and the coincidence of their standpoints humanistically. Realism
as a shelter for absolutism. § 4. Realistic velleities in absolutism
in order to meet the alleged subjectivism of Humanism. Their futility.
§ 5. The cry 'back to Plato.' Platonism as either realism or idealism.
But realism is pluralistic, and if the Absolute also is sacrificed, only the
intellectualism remains in 'absolute idealism.' §6. Common - sense
realism \% pragmatic ', but its working has limits, (i) Religiously;
' Heaven ' is a second ' real world.' (2) Philosophically ; the real world
is a construction, individual and social. (3) Pragmatic realism does
not transcend the experience- process. § 7. Philosophic realism has
overlooked the Humanist alternative. § 8. Other idealisms, personal,
subjective, absolute. §9. An attempt to prove absolute idealism. § 10.
The inadequacies and fallacies of this proof, (i) The ambiguity of
' reality is experience.' (2) The ' subject ' depends on the ' object ' r,s
much as vice versa. (3) The Absolute does not explain human experi-
ences, and vainly complicates the problem of a common world. §11.
(4) Kant's argument from the ' making of reality ' criticized. § 12. (5)
The psychological subjectivity of experiences presupposes a ' real '
world. § 13. Can Idealism be proved pragmatically.? § 14. Its
fundamental dictum is reality is ' my ' experience. Why this is not
necessarily solipsistic. Why it is idealistic. § 15. The extrusion of the
'objective' world, and its volitional character. § 16. The case for
solipsism. § 17. The solipsistic interpretation of dreams has a
pragmatic motive, but § 18 so has the realistic interpretation of waking
life, which remains immanent in experience, and cannot be more real
than that. § 19. Dreams prove that this reality need not be absolute.
§ 20. The philosophic import of dreams. § 21. A simple argument for
idealism. § 22. Seven objections to it and their refutation. § 23. Is
Idealism, then, proved ? A paradoxical form of Realism. § 24. The
final confutation of Realism. § 25. The final confutation of Idealism.
§ 26. The Humanist solution, which combines the objective and sub-
jective factors harmoniously. The Humanist Ideal.

^ This essay appeared in the Hibbert Journal for October 1904. It has been
extensively recast and added to, in order to make more explicit its connexion with
the general thought of these Studies, and to clinch their argument.

452

XX DREAMS AND IDEALISM 453

§ I. For some reason, which it is not difficult to
guess at, and is probably not unconnected with the con-
venient ambiguities of the word, it has become more
reputable for philosophers to call themselves ' idealists '
than ' realists.' But it is merely a popular misapprehension,
which no serious student of philosophy should countenance,
to suppose on this account that any doctrine called
' idealism ' must specially concern itself with the vindica-
tion of ideals. In point of fact the term ' idealism ' is
very variously and vaguely used, the line between it and
' realism ' is by no means an easy one to draw in practice,
and the classification of many doctrines is somewhat
arbitrary. Moreover, it seems hard to say whether the
new pragmatic doctrines are more akin to ' realism ' or to
' idealism,' or supersede this controversy also.

It seems, therefore, that we can most fitly conclude
these Studies by devoting ourselves to an examination of
the present condition of the controversy between ' realism '
and ' idealism,' with a view to determining to which of
them Humanism has more affinity, and how completely
it can assimilate the truths they severally contain. For
it is probable that here too, in dealing with what is
perhaps the ultimate antithesis of intellectualist meta-
physics, Humanism is enabled to play the part of a
mediator who transcends their strife, and incorporates
in a higher synthesis all that is really valuable in
both.

§ 2. We begin, then, with Idealism, which, as we
noted, has attained a certain primacy over Realism, and
developed into a perplexing multitude of forms. The
more degenerate of these come to very little, and are
significant only as illustrating the tendency of more
highly differentiated philosophic thought to revert to the
simpler and more convenient theories of ordinary life.
To many ' idealists ' their ' idealism ' hardly seems to
mean more than this, that they conceive themselves to be
entitled to speak of the universe as somehow and in some
sense ' spiritual ' ; as for the rest they think and act
exactly like naive realists. But hozv and in what sense

454 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xx

the world is * spiritual ' it is impossible to extract from
their ambiguous dicta ; often one suspects that all they
can really mean is that the spiritual is included in the
universe. At any rate they are careful to leave undefined
the meaning of ' spiritual,' and unelucidated the problem
of the exact relation and analogy between the spiritual
character ascribed to the universe and our human
spirits. It is useless, again, to ask them for a proof, or
derivation, of their standpoint : they are too prudent to
attempt it.

It is clear that such flabby ' idealism ' cannot commend
itself to pragmatic thinkers, who will want to know why
that should be called idealism which, both in its practical
consequences and in the efficacious part of its theory,
coincides with realism. It is, accordingly, no wonder
that when the slightest logical pressure is put upon it,
this sort of idealism tends to disappear, or rather to
transform itself into a monistic realism, or realistic
absolutism.

§ 3. All forms of absolutist * idealism,' moreover, have
recently been subjected to very severe pressure in con-
sequence of pragmatist attacks. They have not only^
been asked a number of awkward questions which they
have never been able to answer, but the functional value
and logical validity of their answers to the questions
which they always thought they could answer, and on which
they most prided themselves, have been systematically
impugned. For this transformation of the logical situation
Prof. Dewey's Studies in Logical Theory have been largely
responsible, and the effect upon many idealisms has been
highly paradoxical. For it has apparently driven them
in the direction of realism !

And yet at bottom nothing was more natural. There
is nothing like community in misfortune to awaken
philosophic sympathy. And Prof. Dewey had put
absolute idealism in the same box, or rather in the same
hole, with realism. He had shown, that is, quite clearly,
and in a manner which has not yet been disputed, that
the favourite weapon of idealists in their debates with

XX DREAMS AND IDEALISM 455

realism might be turned against them. They had for
years been accustomed to condemn the fatuity of realism
in assuming that knowledge could be accounted for by a
' transcendent ' real which could not be known. And then
suddenly it turned out that their own theory involved this
same fatuity in an aggravated form ! For it appeared
that absolute knowledge, as they had conceived it, failed
at every point to account for human knowledge, and that
between the two there lay what we have named in
honour of its first discoverer (or maker ?) ' Plato's Chasm,'
to the brink of which their theories could approach, but
which they could never cross.

Fundamentally, therefore, as regards the theory of
knowledge, the position of absolute idealism coincides, in
all the epistemologically important points, with that of
realism. Both have tried to conceive ultimate reality as
essentially ' independent ' of our knowing, as intrinsically
unrelated to our life. In order to satisfy this postulate
both have postulated that our knowing must somehow
transcend itself, and be able to bring us tidings of some-
thing which is unaffected by our process of cognition.
Both involve the fundamental self-contradiction that this
something is conceived both as related to us, and as not
related, in and by the same process. Both have failed to
perceive that there is a much simpler solution of the
problem which involves no such difficulties, that they
have misinterpreted the postulates on which they try to
build the self-contradictory structures of their theories of
knowledge, and that the ' transcendent ' and the ' inde-
pendent ' and the ' absolute ' can far better be conceived
as staying comfortably within the experience process.
Both, in short, have failed to reckon with a Humanist
epistemology.

In comparison with these fundamental points of agree-
ment, the differences between ' realism ' and ' absolute
idealism ' are really negligible. What does it matter
whether the reality to which our knowing has to ' corre-
spond ' is called an absolute ' fact ' or an absolute ' thought ' ?
In neither case can it be reached from the human stand-

456 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xx

point : in either case it would abolish our thought or
render it nugatory, if it could be reached. Still, as we
saw in Essays iv. § 7 and vii. § i, though these difficulties
are all insuperable, yet realism really involves a few less
of them. Absolute idealism has involved itself in some
additional complications, owing to the way in which
absolute thought reduces our thought to an unreal ' appear-
ance,' which can yet somehow persist in asserting its
reality. There is, therefore, a sort of gain for it in
becoming realistic ; and this, together with the perception
of their common entanglement, would amply suffice to
account for the recent drift of ' idealists ' towards realism,
if one could credit them with a full perception of the
difficulties of their theory. But as yet this is hardly the
case. They still conceive them as ' difficulties ' incidental
to a fundamentally sound theory : they have not yet
realized its utter rottenness.

§ 4. They have, moreover, further motives for their
aspirations towards ' a more objective ' view of reality.
They have, in the first place, committed themselves to an
interpretation of the pragmatic theory of knowledge
which renders it controversially desirable to give a more
realistic turn or tone to absolutism. This interpretation
is one which their preconceptions, no doubt, rendered
natural, and perhaps inevitable, but which is nevertheless
wholly mistaken. They have interpreted Pragmatism as
sheer subjectivism, identified it with Protagoreanism,
adopted Plato's identification of the latter with scepticism,
admitted his claim to have refuted it, and added that this
has been done for all time, and that there is nothing new
under the sun.

But all these assertions happen to be false, as we
have fully shown. What is true about them is merely
that Pragmatism has tried to recall philosophy to the con-
sideration of actual human thinking, and that this is
always personal and individual. Hence the absolutist
misinterpretation of this undertaking only proves how the
continued contemplation of ' ideal ' abstractions can vitiate
a human mind. The absolutists who argue as above

XX DREAMS AND IDEALISM 457

have evidently so disaccustomed themselves to observe
the concrete facts of human existence that all actual
thinking seems to them to be of necessity ' merely sub-
jective.' That actual thinking should necessarily start
with the ' subjective,' and naturally reach the ' objective '
by an immanent development which engenders all dis-
tinctions, ' transcends ' them because it includes them,
and reconciles them because it never misconceives them
as absolute, sounds to their ears incredible. They will
not believe it even when they see it set down plainly in
cold print. Yet such is nevertheless the case, and probably
was the case from the first, and implied in the first sketch
of a Humanist theory of knowledge by Protagoras.^

Hence the attempt to refute Humanism and to baffle
its attack by growing more ' realistic ' seems unlikely to
succeed. For the Humanist account of the cognitive
process really transcends both ' realism ' and ' idealism ' as
hitherto maintained. It explains botJi, by tracing their
genesis and pointing out exactly where they have severally
drawn unwarrantable inferences. It can afford, therefore,
to remain on excellent terms with Realism, more particu-
larly with what is really the most practically important
and efficient form of it, viz. the common-sense theory of
ordinary life, of the pragmatic value of which it is keenly
appreciative. It does not profess to despise it, to ' criticize '
or ' overcome ' it ; it simply includes it. It simply points
out that, good as it is so far as it goes, it does not go the
whole way, and must be supplemented.^

It hardly seems worth while, therefore, for ' absolute
idealism ' to take the trouble of becoming realistic, in
order to differ from and to confute a ' subjectivism ' its
critics are not committed to.

§ 5. Still, once the cry ' back to Plato ' has been raised,
it cannot readily be hushed. We have ourselves joined
in it heartily, and insisted that the lesson which Platonism
has for all attempts to separate the ideal from the human
should never be forgotten. But this cry must render
an idealism which adopts it in a manner realistic. For (in

1 Cp. Essay ii. § 5. -' Cp. § 6.

458 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xx

a sense) the Platonic philosophy seems capable of forming
a common meeting- ground for realistic and idealistic
intellectualisms, so much so that it may alternatively be
called a realism or an idealism. Hitherto ' idealists ' have
preferred to call Plato ' the great idealist ' ; in future they
may, as justly or unjustly, call him the great realist. It
really does not matter. For, on the one hand, his Theory
of Ideas is surely ' idealism,' and on the other, the Ideas
are objective entities, and independent and free from all
subjective taint. And it seems to be little more than
an accident that the champion ' realists ' of the day,
Messrs. Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore, have entitled
their ultra-Platonic hypostasization of predicates ' realism '
rather than ' idealism.' If, then, these tendencies are
worked out to their logical conclusions, it may well be
confessed before long that * absolute idealism ' is really
obsolete idealism, at least so far as its substantive part is
concerned.

A promising career might thus be predicted for an
absolutism calling itself a realistic idealism or an idealistic
realism, which Janus-like could always smile triumphantly
with one face, however much the other was smitten, were
it not for two sad circumstances. The first of these is
the existence of Plato's Chasm, across which neither
Platonism nor Realism can help it. The second is Prof
Dewey's proof that in the end all forms, both of meta-
physical realism and of metaphysical absolutism, must fall
into this chasm, and that neither can exonerate the other
from objections which press equally on both. It seems
more likely, therefore, that upon further reflection, and
when the nature of the situation is clearly perceived, this
attempt of absolutism to array itself in the serviceable
sheepskin of an honest realism will be seen to be cankered
in the bud, and will be nipped off quietly.

After all, the enterprise was always paradoxical and
never really safe, and it may mitigate regrets to point out
that in any case ' absolute idealism ' could hardly have
really paid the price of an alliance with Realism. In all
but its materialistic forms. Realism seems profoimdly

XX DREAMS AND IDEALISM 459

pluralistic ; in its most modern philosophic form it is un-
mitigated pluralism. Platonism itself would be pluralistic,
but for the Idea of the Good ; ^ and even this unifying
principle de facto remains an aspiration, which avowedly
cannot be applied to the actual systems of the sciences.
To purchase, therefore, the support of Realism, * absolute
idealism ' would have to surrender its adjective as well as
its substantive, and to evaporate into mere general intel-
lectualism. But this, perhaps, is what ' absolute idealists '
have at bottom cared for most.

§ 6. As the ' idealisms ' we have considered have
brought up the subject of Realism, we may now improve
the occasion to have a preliminary explanation with this
doctrine. And to begin with, we must draw a sharp
distinction between (i) the common-sense or naYve realism
of ordinary life, and (2) philosophic realism.

With the first of these our Humanism will be loth to
quarrel or part company. For it manifestly is a theory
of very great pragmatic value. In ordinary life we all
assume that we live in an ' external ' world, which is
' independent ' of us, and peopled by other persons as real
and as good, or better, than ourselves. And it would be
a great calamity if any philosophy should feel it its duty
to upset this assumption. For it works splendidly, and
the philosophy which attacked it would only hurt itself.

Common sense, or as we may now also call it,
pragmatic realism, works for almost every purpose. It is
only when he tries to satisfy therewith his religious
cravings that the ordinary man discovers that it has its
limitations. For the real world he lives in is not an ideal
world, and he can find no room in it for his ideals.
' Heaven ' cannot be found in the heavens. He is driven,
accordingly, to the thought of ' another world,' which is
not wholly continuous with the real world. Yet it must
be real too, nay, more truly real than our world. He gets,
therefore, two worlds, the ' reality ' of each of which has
somehow to be accommodated to that of the other. The
puzzles involved in this relation the ordinary man, very

1 Essay ii. § 13.

46o STUDIES IN HUMANISM xx

naturally, declines to think out. But he must admit
that they form a legitimate starting-point for a philosophic
elaboration of his working assumption.

The philosopher, for his part, may discover further
limits to the pragmatic sufficiency of ordinary realism.
A few odds and ends of experience, which are usually put
aside as ' unreal,' come under his notice. By investigating
them he slowly comes to realize that the pragmatically
real world is not an original datum of experience at all,
but an elaborate construction, made by us, individually,
and socially, by a purposive selection of the more
efficacious, and a rejection of the less efficacious portions
of a ' primary reality ' which seems chaotic to begin with,
but contains a great deal more than the ' external world '
extracted from it.^ The exact nature of the process by
which the ' real world ' is constructed by us, remains,
indeed, in some respects obscure. It is clear, however,
that the child, from the first day of its individual life, sets
to work to organize the chaos of its primary experience
in ways which are certainly as far as possible removed
from a ' disinterested ' interest in pure knowing, and are
almost certainly volitional. But the baby is not much of
a psychologist, and by the time it has organized its
experience enough to be able to watch its own procedures
and to tell us about them, it has long ago forgotten the
details of its world-ordering achievements. The nearest
approximation we can get to an account of the process
from inside is probably to be found in the fascinating and
unique account by the Rev. ' Mr. Hanna ' of how he
recovered from total amnesia produced by a fall from a
cart.^ But even here ' Mr. Hanna ' had, all unwittingly,
a previous existence to fall back upon, which helped him
greatly in giving him cues and suggesting the interpreta-
tion of his ' chaos.' And this suggests that even if the
baby has not similarly got dim memories of previous
existences to aid it in getting a world to know and know-

^ Cp. Essay vii. § 5, § 14 ; Essay xix. § 7.

* The narrative forms Part ii. in Drs. Sidis and Goodhart's Multiple
Personality.

XX DREAMS AND IDEALISM 461

ing it (a view which Plato of yore and many hundreds of
milHons of men at present have professed to hold), it is
equipped with a bodily structure which instigates it to a
multitude of traditional modes of selective functioning.
Thus the individual's procedure points back (for us at
least) to a human past, and this again to a non-human
past, until our thought is cast back to the apparently
invalid notion of a beginning in absolute chaos.^

It is clear, then, that, taken metaphysically, ordinary
realism develops difficulties which preclude our conceiving
it as ultimately and completely true, even on pragmatic
grounds. It evidently contains much truth, but that truth
will have to be re-interpreted.

The root error of the philosophic treatment of
' pragmatic realism ' is perhaps to take pragmatic asser-
tions as metaphysical dogmas, which they cannot be,
and which they were never really meant to be. The
pragmatic realism which works is 7iot concerned with
ultimate realities. It is relative to life and to the facts of
life. When, therefore, it speaks of ' absolute facts ' and
' independent realities,' it must not be understood too
literally. It does not mean anything that exists out of
relation to us. For such things would have no pragmatic
interest or value. These terms, too, must be interpreted
pragmatically. " There is none but a pragmatic tran-
scendency even about the more absolute of the realities
thus conjectured or believed in " as William James
declares." And we have ourselves seen that the ' independ-
ence ' ascribed to certain realities does not really transcend
the cognitive process.^ It only means that in our
experience there are certain features which it is con-
venient to describe as ' independent ' facts, powers,
persons, etc., by reason of the peculiarities of their
behaviour. In the sense, therefore, in which the term is
intended it is quite legitimate. But the whole is " an
intra-experiential affair." ^ It becomes false only when it
is misinterpreted into a metaphysical dogma, and credited

^ Essay xix. § 7. ^ Journal of Philosophy, ii. 5, p. 117.

^ Essays vii. § 14, and xix. § 10. * James, I.e. p. 118.

462 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xx

with a miraculous capacity to jump out of the universe of
experience and back again as its pleases, without anybody's
being a bit the better (or the worse) for it. Such
acrobatic feats, of course, are pragmatically quite uncalled
for. They are also humanly quite unnecessary. In short,
they are a mistake, and with them vanishes all ground for
a conflict between Humanism and the common-sense
realism which is pragmatically valid, and which the former
merely cleanses of an unessential admixture of erroneous
metaphysics.

§ 7. Towards the philosophic realism, which attempts
to construct a metaphysical theory of a strictly independent
reality which can nevertheless be known. Humanism can-
not assume an equally indulgent attitude. We have
already more than once rehearsed the insoluble puzzles
which this theory involves,^ and need therefore dwell on
them no further. But it must still be pointed out that
even if this sort of realism involved itself in no intrinsic
difficulties, it would yet be lacking in conclusiveness,
because it has overlooked an alternative to the idealism
which it combats. Humanism forms a third alternative
to Realism and Idealism, and can give alternative inter-
pretations of the conceptions on which they severally rely.
As regards Realism, for example, it is possible to conceive
of a ' truth ' and a ' reality ' which are valid, not because
they are ' independent ' of us, but because we have ' made '
them, and they are so completely dependent on us that we
can depend on them to stay ' true ' and ' real ' independently
of us. It is possible, in other words, to conceive all the
terms of the realist epistemology humanistically, as values
selectively attached by us to phenomena within the
knowledge-process, which is both ' objective ' and ' sub-
jective,' and ' makes,' as incidents in its development, all
the terms used by the other theories of knowledge.

It would seem, therefore, that the relations of Humanism
to Realism are comparatively simple. Pragmatic realism
it incorporates ; philosophic realism it convicts of a mis-
conception of its own epistemological terminology.

^ § 3, Essays iv. § 7, and vii. § i.

XX DREAMS AND IDEALISM 463

§ 8. Humanism, however, is as yet far from having
concluded its discussion of Idealism, and here the situation
is far more complicated. For there exist, in the first
place, a number of idealisms which more or less obviously
escape from the objection we have urged against the
realisms and absolutisms we have mentioned. ' Personal
idealism,' for example, in all its forms, clearly abstains from
making the fatal abstraction from personality which is so
ruinous to knowledge ; and it is, at least, a moot point
whether Berkeleianism also may not claim exemption from
condemnation on account of the personalistic element which
it contains alongside of its sensationalist epistemology.
Subjective idealisms, again, which culminate in outright
solipsism, cannot be accused of ignoring the subjective
aspects of cognition. All these idealisms, therefore, if
they fail at all, fail at other points and for other reasons
than those which have been mentioned.

And we have not yet done even with ' absolute
idealism.' For we have not yet examined the most
stalwart form of it, which is a genuine idealism and
unwilling to compromise itself with realism. It makes,
moreover, a real attempt to prove its standpoint, and
instead of merely abusing Berkeley's ' subjectivism,' with-
out supplying any other basis for idealism, it builds on
him, and tries to exploit his argument for its own purposes.
Lastly, it really tries to mediate between the human and
the ' divine.' Its undertaking, therefore, is instructive and
deserving of detailed examination, though undoubtedly
beset with perils. For it aims at steering a safe and
rational course between the Scylla of subjective idealism
and the Charybdis of realism. Actually, however, it
would seem rather to sacrifice part of its crew to Scylla
and the rest to Charybdis, and finally to founder in an
abyss of fallacy.

§ 9. (i) It sets out from what may stand as the
fundamental tenet of all genuine idealism, to which, in its
own sense, Humanism willingly assents, viz. the assertion
that reality is experience. But, as thus baldly stated, this
proposition needs expansion if it is to account for the

464 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xx

facts, and idealistic absolutism also has to develop it. It
proceeds, therefore, to add, on the one hand, that the
experience which is co-extensive with reality is not to be
identified with our experience — as the subjective idealists
falsely suppose — while yet, on the other, the assertion that
reality is independent of our experience is not to involve
a lapse into realism.

It protests, therefore, (2) that subjective idealism is
absurd. The subjectivist cannot really suppose that
things cease to exist when he is not perceiving them,
nor that his fellow-men are but phantoms of his own
creation. But this very sensible contention at once
raises a difficulty. For does not this concession block
the original road to Idealism, and bring us back to
Realism? (3) The absolutist, therefore, tries to save his
idealism by adding to the assertion that reality is ex-
perience— 'j^J, but the Absolute's, not ours' The Absolute
is an infinite experience which includes all our finite
experiences, and eternally perceives the system of the
universe, thus providing a habitation for realities (ideas)
which have lapsed from the minds of individual thinkers.
(4) The finite subject's self-elation is thus put down, but
the qualities of the absolute experience remain to be
determined. And this might be difficult if the finite
spirit, of which alone we seem to have direct knowledge,
were wholly worthless. But it can be declared an im-
perfect reflexion of the Absolute, and then observations
of finite experience may once more be appealed to to
give a content to the notion of ' experience.' By their
propitious aid the void and formless Absolute gets itself
determined as individual, pm'posive, and spiritual, some-
times even as conscious and personal, while any doubts as
to whether these human qualities will stand a transfer to
the Absolute are silently evaded.

It is, I think, apparent that, when thus reduced to its
bare essentials, this absolutist proof of Idealism seems by
no means satisfactory. Nor would so many philosophers
have felt bound to accept it faute de mieux had they not
come upon it with two settled convictions — the one, derived

XX DREAMS AND IDEALISM 465

from their studies, that Realism is impossible, and the
other from their natural instincts, that subjective idealism
is practically absurd.

A little reflection, however, will show that if the
above argument be the best Idealism can do, then no form
of Idealism is tenable. But this as yet it would be
premature to assert. A strictly logical idealism must
certainly steer nearer to subjectivism than to absolutism,
and avoid the assumption of an absolute experience
as self-defeating and as accounting for the ' independent '
existence of the ' real ' world as little as the wildest
solipsism. But, even so, it would be exposed to grave
objections.

§ 10. For it must at length be noted that all the stock
arguments for Idealism are fallacious or inadequate. Thus
(i) the mere experiencing of a world cannot be taken as
an adequate proof of Idealism, because it would occur
equally if Realism were right. For, however ' independent '
the reality might be in itself, it would be real for us only
as experienced. Still less could it validly be urged
against a view which conceives the reality and the
experiencing as evolving pari passu.

(2) It seems vain merely to show that without an
experiencing subject there can be no object, and that,
therefore, reality is spiritual. For this fails to show that
reality is zvJiolly spiritual, if spiritual means subjective.
For the ' subject ' in this argument is just as much con-
ditioned by the ' object ' as vice versa. Each is implied in
the other, and neither can claim the priority. Experience
is a process which plays between two poles, both of which
are necessary to its reality. The idealistic interpretation,
therefore, is, at most, a half truth.

(3) The argument that as the world is plainly not
dependent on ' my ' experience, it must be on the Ab-
solute's, succumbs to the slightest criticism. It is traceable,
of course, to the old Berkeleian doctrine that the esse
of things is their percipi, whence it infers that as there is
a permanent world-order there must also be a continuous
divine percipient. In this, however, some serious sub-

2 H

466 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xx

reptions have already been committed. Thus it has been
taken for granted (i) that there already is what as yet
we are only struggling towards, viz. a world-order strictly
'common' to a plurality of percipients ;^ and (2) that the
alleged permanence of the world as it appears to the
postulated non-human mind is available as an explanation
of ' my ' intermittent experience, and yields a common
ground for individual experiences to meet on. The
Absolute, in short, is used as an asylum ignorantiae, which
hides from view the real difficulties, both of the practical
and of the metaphysical problem of a ' common ' world.

The absolutist form of this argument, moreover, is
greatly inferior to the Berkeleian. For Berkeley had at
least claimed the right to conceive the divine mind in
a sufficiently human fashion to render plausible, if not
unexceptionable, the analogy between it and the human
mind. But all such analogies utterly break down when
an impersonal, inhuman Absolute, is substituted for God.
For then the world is not ' in ' my consciousness in the
same way as it is in the Absolute's, nor does it exist '■for '
my mind in the same way as it is supposed to do for the
Absolute's. Indeed, it is only in a different and quite
improper sense that mind and consciousness can be
attributed to the totality of things — the Absolute.
Moreover, its experience ' includes ' other experiences in
a way * mine ' does not. Nor does their inclusion in an
absolute ' mind ' render things any the less extra-mental
to me, or alleviate the pressure of an alien reality. From
our human point of view, therefore, this absolute idealism
is the crassest realism : it has wholly lost also the chief
emotional advantage of idealism, the power, to wit, of
fostering a feeling of kinship with the universe.^

And, finally, it is merely an illusion that the existence
of an Absolute at all accounts for the common world of
individual percipients. For (i) it is practically useless ;
it does nothing to alleviate our practical difficulties of
understanding one another — of communicating ideas and
experiences. (2) It leaves the individual variations just

^ Cp. pp. 4 «., 110, 315-20. " Cp. Humanism, pp. 197-8.

XX DREAMS AND IDEALISM 467

the same. But (3) it renders their existence theoretically
incomprehensible. For even when we have hastily taken
it to solve the question of the possibility of a common
world (by begging it), we find ourselves involved instead
in a still more puzzling problem, viz. that of accounting
for an indefinite plurality of fragmentary distortions of
the absolute world-image. To dismiss these cavalierly as
' appearances ' is to exhibit temper, not to solve the
problem. For, after all, it was these human experiences
which the Absolute was invoked to explain. Not only
does it refuse to do this, but it leaves us (4) with our
difficulty doubled. We had to explain how the many
individual perceptions could correspond with one another
and coalesce into a common world. We have now to
explain, in addition, how each of them can correspond
with an absolute perception as well !

Is it too much, therefore, to conclude that the argument
from the human to the ' absolute ' mind does not hold
because there is no analogy between them ? An Ab-
solute, of course, may still be conceived to ' include ' us
and all things, but there is no reason whatsoever to
regard it as ' spiritual ' or as spiritually valuable. The
Absolute will help us neither to regard Reality as spiritual,
nor to escape from the difficulties of Idealism.

§ II. (4) We may consider next the idealistic argu-
ment which goes back to Kant, and forms the core of
his ' transcendental idealism,' namely, the important and
indispensable part played by human activity in the con-
stitution of ' reality.' To accept from Kant the details
of the operations of thought in building up reality is a
feat which none of his disciples have so far achieved, and
which is no doubt impossible. But his main principle is
sound ; reality for us is largely of our making. Indeed,
so far from disputing this, our Humanist theory of
knowledge has only made it clearer. It has become
manifest that selective attention and purposive manipula-
tion are essential and all-pervasive influences in the
construction of the * real ' world, and even the funda-
mental axioms, which (like Causation) long seemed

468 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xx

objective and * independent ' facts, and by Kant were
still regarded as facts of mental structure, are now shown
to originate in subjective demands.^ A Humanist philo-
sopher, therefore, is not likely to undervalue whatever
testimony to Idealism may be derivable from the mould-
ing of our experience of reality by our activity. But
candour compels him to avow that no proof of complete
Idealism seems attainable in this fashion. For it cannot
be proved that reality is w/^^//y of subjective manufacture.
Kant himself found that the ' forms of thought ' must
be supplied with ' matter ' from ' sensation,' to render
possible the construction of an ' objective ' nature : nor is
a disavowal of his antithesis a solution of his problem.
A second factor, therefore, not of our making, must be
admitted into our ' reality.' This we may (and must)
attenuate into a mere indeterminate potentiality," or
disparage by protesting that the true reality of things is
never to be sought in what they originally were, but
rather in what they have been enabled to become : ^ but
such pragmatic ways of dealing with the difficulty are
not open to the Kantian idealist. He is still intellectualist
enough to shrink from the assertion that what is methodo-
logically null and practically valueless may be ignored by
a theory of knowledge. And so for him there still
remains a given material for his constructive manipulation
— 'an objective condition of his activity. However much,
therefore, he emphasizes the function of constructive activity
in the cognition of reality, he still falls short of a proof
that reality is wholly psychical.

§ 12. (5) Psychology has supplied an interesting argu-
ment to the subjectivity of all experiences from the
variations of individual perceptions. But it too is in-
sufficient to prove Idealism. For it has already pre-
supposed a ' real ' world in the very experiments which
establish the existence of these subjective differences in
perception. Hence, though their significance has been
unduly overlooked by philosophers, and their proper

^ Cp. Axioms as Postulates, §§ 38-9 ; Formal Logic, ch. xx. § 6.
^ Essay xix. § 6. ^ Essay xix. § 7.

XX DREAMS AND IDEALISM 469

observation may be scientifically most important, and
throws much light on the de facto ways in which the
' common ' world of social intercourse is established and
extended, the proof that reality is psychical is ultra vires
also for this argument. It can be appealed to only after
it has been shown that the * real ' world which it pre-
supposes is already ' ideal.'

§ I 3. Shall it be admitted, then, that the ' proofs ' of
Idealism one and all break down ? Certainly, if what we
required was an a priori proof independent of experience.
Our ultimate assumptions cannot be proved a priori ;
they can only be assumed and tried. And Idealism also
may claim to be too fundamental to be derivable from
anything more ultimate. It too may appeal to the
pragmatic test, and thereby win our sympathies. Let it
be assumed, then, tentatively, and to see how it works.
If it is content to be proved in this way, it may claim,
and perhaps substantiate its claim, to yield a successful
and adequate interpretation of experience. And, more-
over, by conceiving and assuming it thus, we may come
upon one real, though empirical, argument in its favour,
which seems to go a long way towards confirming its
contention.

§ 14. In attempting such a proof we must be bold as
well as sympathetic. We must not fear to follow our
assumptions into their most incisive and instructive conse-
quences. It will be futile, therefore, to shrink from the
proposition that the fundamental dictum of Idealism must
be formulated as being that Reality is '•my' experience.
This dictum has a subjective tinge, which has terrified most
of the soi-disant ' idealists,' and driven them blindly into
the nearest refuge for the intellectually destitute. But
there is no great harm in it, if we do not allow it to harden
into solipsism, and are careful to conceive a sufficiently
intimate and plastic correlation between the world or
reality and the self or experient. We must especially avoid
the fatal blunder of imagining that when we have pro-
nounced our dictum, we know all about the self and the
world, and have nothing more to learn from experience.

470 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xx

We still have almost everything to learn. For we have
really still to learn both what we are and what the world
is, and what precisely we mean by calling it ours. We
may not, therefore, so far treat our knowledge of the self
as primary and our knowledge of the world as secondary,
as solipsism tries to do. It is truer to treat the knowledge
of each as defining the other, and to say that the world
cannot be known without knowing the self, nor the self
without knowing the world.

This relation of mutual implication of self and world,
therefore, might just as well be denominated realism as
idealism. What alone gives superior plausibility to its
idealistic interpretation is the empirical fact that the
interpenetration of the self and the world is not complete.
The self is not exclusively implicated in our ' real ' world.
It has experience also of the ' primary reality ' ^ out of
which the real world is constructed, and it extends also, as
we shall see (§§ 23, 26), into ' unreal ' worlds of experience.
It is not, therefore, tied to the one pragmatically real
world, and this enables it to conceive itself as transcend-
ing it, and gives it a certain primacy.

§ I 5. Still the proposition that reality is ' my ' experience
is not pragmatically workable. The initial statement,
therefore, of Idealism must at once be expanded, and
subjected to a modification which amounts to a correction.
I have to realize that, though the reality may be really
mine, it has yet been largely ' ejected ' or extruded from
my consciousness, and endowed with an ' independent '
existence or ' transcendent ' reality. And the motives for
this procedure need analysis.

Looking into this question, we soon perceive that our
motives were volitional. We were not constrained by
any logical compulsion, but impelled by our emotions and
desires. We refused to accept as ours the whole of our
experience ; and that on grounds as emotional as they
are empirical. This is once more illustrated by the strange
case of ' Mr. Hanna,' who, in consequence of being
pitched out of a carriage on to his head, became as

1 §6.

XX DREAMS AND IDEALISM 471

a new-born babe with an adult intelligence. He sub-
sequently described how he surrendered his natural
solipsism on being restrained by the doctors, who
thought him delirious. " The first that I was really sure
that there was something beside me was when Dr. O.
jumped on me. Then I was sure there was something
against me." " But before you thought it was yourself ? "
" Yes, but I thought I didn't know it all." " Did you
know why he jumped on you ? " " No ; I knew I was
trying to reach out, and he was trying to push me back,
and I saw that Dr. O. was the only one, and I could not
really make out that there were many of them in the
room. It seemed to me that, after all, it was all one
thing that was against me, and tJiat they were all like
a part of me." ^ Our experience, it is clear, happens to
be of such a sort that we will not accept the entire
responsibility for it. So we postulate an external extra-
mental reality, to which we can attribute, without loss of
self-esteem, most of its offensive features.^

It is, however, quite conceivable that experience might
be, or become, such that our objection to owning it would
disappear. If, e.g. events invariably took the course we
desired, should we not succumb to the temptation of
fancying ourselves the omnipotent creators of the cosmic
history ? Or, again, if pleasure and pain (or even pain
alone) were eliminated from our experience, should we
retain self-consciousness enough to frame the antithesis of
' self and ' world'? And what motive would remain for
ascribing any feature in the course of events to an
* independent' world ?

§ 16. That there was no logical necessity about the
conception of an external world follows also from the
possibility of solipsism. It is unfortunate that the mere
mention of this theory annoys philosophers, especially
those who plume themselves on being ' idealists,' to
the very verge of aphasia, and that in consequence they

^ Sidis and Goodhart, Multiple Personality , p. 109, cp. p. 205.

2 The primitive instinct is to assign to an external cause even the most clearly-
subjective disorders. Hence diseases of body and mind are ascribed to possession
by demons.

472 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xx

rarely produce an articulate refutation of it. For solipsism
is intellectually quite an entertaining doctrine, and not
logically untenable ; it is only practically uncomfortable.
We might, had we willed it, have taken a solipsist
view of the situation, if we were willing to take the
consequences. Any one madly logical enough might always
insist that he was the sole and uncontrolled creator of
his whole experience. When he fell into a ditch he
might applaud his subtle sense of humour in hoaxing
himself When, touching fire, he was burned, he might
still proudly claim the authorship of the fire. And when,
annoyed at his fatuity, you went up and boxed his ears,
he might still ascribe the indignity to the bad regulation
of his creative fancy ! In short, no logic could refute
him, so long as he himself did not refuse to own whatever
incidents befell him, and was willing to accept them as
characteristic of his nature. It might be demonstrated,
of course, that such a nature must be inherently absurd
and perverse, self-contradictory and self-tormenting, and
even self-destroying, as, e.g. if he declined to manipulate
that idea of his which he calls his legs in such a way as
to avoid a contact between it and that idea of his which
he calls an angry bull. But if he were blandly willing
to admit all this, what then ? However you maltreated
him, you could not force him to admit your ' independent '
reality.

But, you will say, the solipsist is mad, and no sane
person can entertain such fancies. Even about this it is
not safe to dogmatize. The point whether a being, to
which there must be attributed an inherently discordant
and conflicting nature, is mad, would have to be settled
with the philosophers of the Absolute. For must not
their idol, which ' includes,' ' is ', and ' owns ' the weltering
mass of suffering, struggling, and conflicting experiences
that make up our world, have very much the constitution
of our imaginary solipsist ? And does not this philosophy
come to the queer conclusion that solipsism is absolutely
true and yet for us unthinkable ? ^
' Cp. Essay x.

XX DREAMS AND IDEALISM 473

§ 1 7. And, further, before we condemn the soHpsist as an
outrageous fool, should we not reflect whether we do not
ourselves agree with him ? Are we not in the habit of
claiming as of our own fabrication large portions of our
experience which are just as absurd and incoherent as
those of the poor solipsist ? Do we not, that is, regard
ourselves as the authors and inventors of our own night-
mares ? And so is it not a flagrant inconsistency to
adopt a solipsistic interpretation for our ' dreams ' and
a realist interpretation for our ' waking ' experiences ?

What makes this worse is that it is quite hard at
times to know to which portion of life an experience
ought to be assigned, and that no fundamental differences in
character betzveen the two can be established. For a
dream-world, like that of waking life, runs its course in
time and extends itself in space, and contains persons
and things that seem ' independent,' and sometimes are
pleasing, and sometimes the reverse. There is therefore
no theoretic reason for the difference in our attitude.
The reason is purely practical, and excellent so far as
it goes. Dream-worlds are of inferior value for our
purposes, and are therefore judged ' unreal! What pre-
cisely is their philosophic value remains to be elucidated ;
but at any rate they show that the solipsistic interpreta-
tion of experience is neither impossible nor theoretically
wrong.

§ 18. The realistic interpretation, therefore, of our
waking life and the ' independent reality ' of the world
we experience is not an inevitable, but a pragmatic
inference, and involves no real inconsistency. It is the
result of an extrusion by which we resent the intrusion
of unwelcome incidents. It need not, therefore, ever
have suggested itself ; we might all have lived and died
as chaotic solipsists to all eternity. But once the happy
thought occurred to any one, that he might postulate an
independent reality to account for the incoherencies in
his experience, the foundations of realism were laid. The
procedure was a great and instant success.^ The notion

' Cp. § 6, and Axioms as Postulates, § 35.

474 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xx

of an independent external world and independent other
persons has indisputably worked, and philosophic argu-
ments are impotent against it. If philosophy disputes
it, it will only earn contempt. For common sense is
always ready to suppose that whatever works is true,
and, fortunately, philosophy is now tending to admit that
common sense is, mainly, right.

But though the Realism of ordinary life and science is
right so far as it goes, it is not a complete proof of
absolute Realism. The ' independent reality ' which has
been postulated is not after all independent of experience,
but relative to the experience which it serves to harmonize.
It is nothing absolute ; it means ' real ' in and for that
experience. It may be, therefore, as real as that experi-
ence, but can never be more real. The external world and
my fellow-creatures therein are real ' independently ' of
me, because this assumption is essential to my action,
and therefore as real as the experience I am thereby
trying to control, provided always that the situation
wJiich evoked the postulate continues. Thus the ' independ-
ence ' of the real world is limited by the very postulate
which constructed it ; it is an independence subject to
the one condition that its postulation should not cease.
If, therefore, anything should happen in my experience
leading me to doubt its ultimateness, the reality of the
' independent ' external world would be at once affected.

§ 19. Now, curiously enough, it is a fact that our ex-
perience as a whole is such as to suggest doubts of its own
finality. It is not wholly real ; we predicate unreality and
illusion of large tracts of it : * real reality ' is only a species,
with ' unreality,' in the larger genus of primary reality.
Thus it is these discontinuities in our experience which
familiarize us with the notion of different orders of
reality. We experience abrupt transitions from one
plane to another of reality, and in consequence we often
find ourselves revising our belief in the independent
reality of much that at first was accepted without qualms.
Our dream-experiences, of course, are a signal illustration
of all this. They are facts which incontestably show

XX DREAMS AND IDEALISM 475

that a claim to reality is no proof of it, and that our
pragmatic realities need not be ultimate.

This only shows, it may be said, that philosophers are
dreamers, and that you are no better than the rest. I
can swallow the insult if I am allowed to exculpate the
other philosophers. For really there are few subjects
which philosophers have more persistently forborne to
work out, not to say neglected, than the philosophic
import of dreams. And yet reflection on their existence
might have led to corollaries of the greatest value for the
proper understanding of experience.

§ 20. (i) The fact of dream-experience, in principle,
involves an immense extension of the possibilities of
existence. It supplies a concrete, easy, and indisputable
illustration of how to understand the notion of other
worlds that are really * other,' and the manner of a
transition from one world to another. It shows us that
Paradise cannot be found by travelling north, south, east,
or west, however far — that it is vain to search the satellites
of more resplendent suns for more harmonious conditions
of existence. We must pass out of our ' real ' space
altogether, even as we pass out of a dream-space on
awaking. In short, we may confidently claim that to
pass from a world of lower into one of higher reality
would be like waking from an evil dream ; to pass from a
higher into a lower world would be like lapsing into
nightmare.^

(2) More than this, dream - experience suggests a
definite doubt of the ultimateness of our present waking
life, and a definite possibility of worlds of higher reality
(' heavens ') related to our present waking life just as
the latter is to dream -life. Thus a thought which
Religion long ago divined, dimly and with incrusta-
tions of mythopceic fancy. Philosophy expounds as a
reasoned and reasonable possibility, and urges Science
to verify in actual fact.- And already this unverified
conception may sanction the consoling hope that of the
evil and irrationality that oppress us not a little may be

1 Cp. Humanism, p. 282, 2nd ed. p. 367. ^ Cp. ibid. p. 283.

476 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xx

due to our not yet having found a way to dissipate the
spell of a cosmic nightmare which besets us.

§ 2 1. (3) Do not dreams yield the simplest and most
cogent of all pleas for Idealism ? Do they not afford a
brilliant vindication to the idealist's contention that whole
worlds of vast complexity may be subjective in their
origin, and that their seeming reality is no sufficient
warrant for their extra-mental nature ? Do they not
triumphantly enforce our warning that the ascription of
reality to the contents of experience must not be made
more absolute than need be ? For while we dream
them, our dream-experiences may seem as ' independent '
of our wishes and expectations as any incident in our
waking life ; but that this independence was deceptive,
and conditional upon the dream's continuance, we mostly
realize on waking up.

We seem to derive, therefore, from the empirical, but
incontestable, fact of dreaming a striking confirmation
of the original idealist assertion, viz. that as reality is
experience, the psychic factor in it is essential to its
existence, and also a proof that apparent need not be real
' reality! And this is proved, not of ' dreams ' alone, but of
* waking ' life no less. For the existence of the former
enables us to grasp the thought of a fuller reality tran-
scending waking life, as the latter transcends dreams.^

Just how far these propositions go to prove Idealism
and to disprove Realism of any kind, may fitly be con-
sidered when the doctrine has encountered a few of the
objections which are easily suggested, and as easily
refuted.

§ 22. (i) Thus it is clear that our view provides for
the fullest recognition of empirical reality. Such recog-
nition is usually just as full in dreams as in waking
life. I run away from a dream-crocodile on a dream-
river with the same unhesitating alacrity as I should
display if I met a real crocodile on the banks of the
Nile.

(2) ' But,' it may be objected, ' do you not in your

' Cp. Riddles of the Sphinx, ch. ix. §§ 24-5.

XX DREAMS AND IDEALISM 477

dreams see through the illusion and detect the unreality ?
Do you not ktiow that you are dreaming ? ' Sometimes,
I reply ; but then I sometimes also suspect the reality
of my waking life. In fact, that is what I am disputing
just now. And in support of my suspicions I am able
to quote a wholfe host of religious, scientific, and philo-
sophic doctrines concerning the ' true reality ' of worlds
other than that of sense-appearance.

(3) * But is not dream-life merely a parody of real life,
a grotesque rehash of past experiences containing nothing
novel or original ? Why question the conventional ex-
planation of science, which assumes the primary reality
of waking life and treats all other modes of experiencing
as aberrations from it ? '

We are, of course, aware that the philosophic claim
we are making for dreams is from the standpoint of
common science, a giant paradox. Nor should we
dispute that for the ordinary purposes of practice that
standpoint will suffice. But with the wider outlook of
philosophy one must remember (i) that the exclusive
reality of ' waking ' experience is not a primary fact, but
the outcome of a long process of differentiation and
selection (§ 6) which is not yet quite complete, as is
shown by the survival of the belief in the prophetic signifi-
cance of dreams. The process can be traced and practically
justified, but it can never subvert the immediate reality
of ' unreal ' experience. (2) It is not quite true that
there is no originality in dreams. There do occur in
them, though rarely, experiences which cannot as such
be directly paralleled from waking life. Do we not fly
in dreams, and glide, and fall down precipices without
hurt ? Yet these are achievements we have never
accomplished while awake. Nor can I imagine what
justified me once in dreaming that I was a beautiful
woman well over eight feet high ! I remember that it
felt most uncomfortable. (3) Whatever may be the ex-
tent and meaning of this originality in dreams, it is not
essential to our answer. For the ' scientific ' objection to
dreams is in any case unable to rebut the suggestion

478 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xx

that, instead of imitating ' waking ' life, it and dream-life
may both be imitating a higher and more real experience
of which for the moment we have grown oblivious, that
this is the real source of the similarity between them, and
that on awaking from our ' waking ' life we should dis-
cover this, and then only really understand both our earth-
life and our dream-life.

(4) ' But is it not an essential difference that
" dreams " are short and fleeting, while waking reality
abides ? ' No, I reply, the difference in duration does not
matter. Our subjective time-estimation is enormously
elastic ; some dreams, as experienced, may teem with the
events of a lifetime. That, on awakening, they should
shrivel ex post facto into a few moments of 'waking ' time
is irrelevant. In the time of a more real world might not
a similar condensation and condemnation overtake our
waking life ? It is as possible to have a time within a
time, and a dream within a dream, as to have a play
within a play, and the fact that we criticize a dream-time
and a dream-reality within another of the same kind no
more proves the latter's absolute reality than the fact
that Hamlet can discourse about the players' play to
Ophelia proves that Shakespeare did not write both the
plays.

(5) * But is it not an important difference that whereas
the breaks in waking life are yet bridged so that it can
continue coherently from day to day, each dream-ex-
perience forms a unique and isolated world to which we
never can return ? ' There is a difference here, but too
much must not be made of it. For it seems to be merely
an empirical accident that we do not usually resume our
dreams as we do our waking life. And that the fact has
not imposed on our writers is attested, e.g., by the tales of
Peter Ibbetson, the Brush-wood Boy, and The Pilgrims of
the Rhine. Moreover, cases of dreams continued from
night to night are on record.^ The trance - person-
alities, too, of many mediums are often best interpreted
as continuous dreams ; as, for instance, the strange

^ Cp. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, i. pp. 353-77.

XX DREAMS AND IDEALISM 479

trance lives of Mile. ' Helene Smith,' studied by Prof.
Flournoy.^

Again, there are on this point assertions implied in all
the great religions which should be most embarrassing to
the common-sense confidence in the unreality of dreams.
' Visions ' and ' revelations ' of more real worlds, and
experiences of spiritual ecstasies, are not merely the
central reality of all mysticism, but permeate the Scriptures
and the lives of the founders of religions which count
their adherents by the million. Is not every good
Mohammedan bound to believe that his Prophet was
carried up to ' heaven ' on the celestial camel Borak, and
there copied the sacred text of the eternal Koran ? Must
not good Jews and good Christians similarly concede the
authenticity of the theophanies to Moses and St. Paul ?
Yet from the standpoint of waking life all these ex-
periences were indubitably of the * unreal ' order. No
doctor, e.g., would hesitate for an instant to ascribe the
experiences of Jesus at the Temptation to hallucinations
engendered by the forty days' fast on which they followed.
We have learnt, indeed, from William James that this
' medical materialism ' does not dispose of the spiritual value
of such ' abnormal ' experiences.^ But the fact remains that
if the religions are to stand, they must contend that
phenomena which would ordinarily be classified as unreal
may, properly, belong to a world of higher reality. The
ordinary man, therefore, must choose between abandoning
his religion, and admitting that experiences on a
different level from that of waking life are in some way
real, and that it is not their discrepancy from ordinary
life, but their own contents, which decide in what way.
They are not necessarily discontinuous, incoherent, and
unimportant because they diverge from the ordinary level :
they may claim, and possess, greater spiritual value and
a superior reality.

And so, lastly, it may be pointed out that the unreality
we allege against ordinary dreams rests really on their

1 Des Indes a. la plantte Mars.
2 The Varieties of Religious Experience, ch. i.

48o STUDIES IN HUMANISM xx

intrinsic shortcomings. ' Real ' and ' unreal ' are really
distinctions of value within experience ; the ' unreal ' is
what may safely be ignored, the ' real ' what it is better to
recognize. If in our sleep we habitually * dreamt ' a
coherent experience from night to night, such a dream-life
would soon become a ' real ' life, of which account would
be taken, and to which, as in Bulwer Lytton's story,
waking life might even be sacrificed. We should have
to regard ourselves as living in two worlds, and which of
them was more ' real ' would depend largely on the interest
we took in our several careers.

(6) Leaving such psychological complexities, our
objector might take simpler and more practical ground.
' Dwelling on dreams,' he might say, * is pernicious. It
undermines our faith in the reality of waking life ; it
impairs the vigour of the action which presupposes such
reality.' And, of course, if this were true, if our doctrine
were practically paralysing and calculated to unnerve us,
no more serious objection could be brought against it in
pragmatic eyes. But there is no reason to anticipate any
such debilitating consequences. Logically there is nothing
in the thought of a higher reality that should lead us to
neglect the highest reality with which we are in con-
tact, or lead us to suppose that the right principles
of action in our world would be wholly abrogated in a
higher. Once more we might appeal to the religious
conceptions of ' higher ' worlds for confirmation. The
' other ' worlds they postulate are not intended as reduc-
tions of the earthly life to unimportance, but as enhance-
ments of its significance.

Psyclwlogically^ also, it does not seem true that we
do not take our dream-worlds seriously while they last,
or are more careless about our actions in them ; the
terrors of a nightmare are surely often among the most
real and intense feelings of a lifetime, and a man who
could discover a way of controlling the dreams of others
would speedily master the ' real ' world.

(7) Lastly, a still more personal objection may be
taken. If waking life may be as unreal as a ' dream,'

XX DREAMS AND IDEALISM 481

may not those for whom we have cared in it turn out to
be as unreal as the personages of our dreams ? And will
not this atrocious, but inevitable, inference rob life of most
of its personal interest ?

This argument, in the first place, cuts both ways. Not
all persons are pleasant, and it might be quite a relief to
find that some of the bad characters in our experience
were but the monsters of a dream. Secondly, it does not
follow that because persons (and things) belong to a
dream-life they do not belong also to a world of higher
reality. Our dreams, that is, may be veridical and
reminiscent of past terrors ; and they may refer to, or
foreshadow true reality,^ even as already we may dream
of the persons and events of our ' waking ' lives.

§ 23. All these objections, then, are capable of being
met, and the doctrine that dreams emancipate us from
too absolute a subservience to the realities of waking life
cannot be shown to deprive our life of any element of
value, while it opens out possibilities of an indefinite
enhancement of that value. But we have still to ask how
far we may take this as meaning that Idealism has been
established, and Realism confuted, beyond doubt.

Taking the latter question first, it would seem that, so
far as this argument goes, uncompromising Realism, viz.
the assertion that existence is quite independent of ex-
perience, is still tenable. If, that is, it is ever really true
that the real world is independent of us, then the existence
of dream-worlds does not render the belief untenable.
But it remains tenable only at the cost of a paradox
which most realists, perhaps, would shrink from. For
inasmuch as it has been shown that a complete parallelism
exists between ' dream ' worlds and ' real ' worlds, the
resolute realist must take the bull by the horns, and
boldly allege that all experiences are cognitions of real
worlds, and the dream-worlds are real too ! He might
explain further that the coexistence of an indefinite
plurality of real worlds, of infinitely various kinds and
degrees of completeness, complexity, extent, coherence,

^ Cp. Humanism, p. 284, ed. 2, p. 369.

2 I

482 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xx

pleasantness, rationality, etc., was quite conceivable.
Habitually, no doubt, we were confined to one of these,
but occasionally, as in dreams, we (or our ' souls ') were
enabled, we knew not by what magic, to make fleeting
incursions into these other, equally real, worlds, and there
to make new acquaintances or to meet old ones, to act
and suffer, and finally to return and say (falsely) that ' it
was all a dream.' Such is the sole interpretation of the
facts a consistent Realism could come to, and though it
has not yet been advocated with full philosophic con-
sciousness, it is not very far removed from some early
speculations about dreams which are still entertained by
savages.

And, like most consistent views in metaphysics, it
would not be quite easy to refute. It would seem like an
appeal to taste rather than to principle, e.g. to urge that
to assume such a plurality of worlds was needlessly to
complicate existence, or that more idealistic interpreta-
tions of dream-worlds were to us personally more
attractive.

§ 24. So it is better, perhaps, to fall back upon our
general objections to metaphysical Realism, which we
have meanwhile held in abeyance, and to improve them
into a final confutation of this theory.

Let us then, once more, emphatically affirm that the
entire independence of experience which it attributes to
the real is in every way impossible and incredible. It is,
moreover, an unwarranted misinterpretation. For (i) the
fact we start from, and must continue to start from, is not
a ' reality ' which is ' independent,' but one which is
experienced. The mutual implication of ' experience ' and
' reality,' in other words, forbids their divorce (§ 1 4).
And (2) the ' independent reality ' attributed to some of
the objects of our experience does not mean what the
metaphysical realist supposes. It does not assert an
absolute independence, but is relative to, and rightly
understood, means to be T-elative to the experiencing mind
which asserts it. The reality we predicate, therefore, is
never ' extra-mental ' ; it has at its heart a reference to

XX DREAMS AND IDEALISM 483

the experience which it serves to explain. If, therefore,
Realism is taken to mean a denial that experience and
reality belong together, it becomes a metaphysic for which
there neither is, nor can be, any positive evidence.

§ 25. But the same considerations will confute also
any idealism which asserts existence to be merely mental,
and a fortiori \i mental is taken solipsistically. If, as we
have seen, ' reality ' and ' experience ' are correlated terms,
it is false in principle to reduce the former to the latter.
The mind can no more be real without a * real world ' of
some sort to recognize and know, than the real world
known can be real without a mind to know it. There is
nothing, either in the logical situation or in our actual
experience, which warrants either the ' idealist ' or the
' realist ' assertion. This was why we were so cautious
never to admit that reality was only ' my ' experience, or
wholly psychic. In so far, therefore, as this claim is
implied in the fundamental position of Idealism, Idealism
is finally false, and as false as Realism. But is it ? One
can hardly answer, because so much depends upon usage.
Moreover, though it matters a great deal whether or not
we grasp a doctrine clearly, it matters far less whether we
label it in one way or another. The old labels, however,
have grown so worn and dirty, and have had so many
conflicting directions inscribed upon them, they have
suffered so many erasures and corrections, that even the
most optimistic philosopher may well doubt whether they
can convey the treasures of our truth safely to our destina-
tion, and the most conservative, whether we had not
better start afresh with new ones. Humanists, at all
events, will have a special motive for discarding both the
old labels. For some of them hitherto had been ac-
customed to describe their doctrines as realistic, others as
idealistic ; others have varied their descriptions as the
exigencies of exposition seemed to require. For them,
at all events, it will be simpler to regard the doctrine we
have developed as neither realistic nor idealistic, but as
humanistic.

§ 26. They will be confirmed in this view by observing

484 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xx

that the illustration from dreams, though it seemed to
arise from a defence of Idealism, did not fail to bring out
this most important point, that a recognition of reality
was always involved. For the appeal to dreams showed
the ideal character of the real only by referring to a
higher reality in which the unreality of the ' dream ' could
be revealed. The notion of reality, therefore, was not
abolished, but reaffir^ned. We merely abandoned a less
for a more satisfactory form of reality. For we were led
to the thought of a higher reality which, so far from being
merely subjective appearance, was needed for its detection.
Thus a recognition of reality was the condition of the
condemnation of appearance, nor could anything be
condemned as a ' dream ' until we had already awakened
to something more truly ' real.'

Thus an * objective ' factor and a recognition of
' reality ' were always essential. But so was their rela-
tion to our experience, nay to ' my ' experience. For
ultimately to every ' me ' the recognition of reality
depends on its pragmatic efficacy in harmonizing and
organizing ' my ' experience. If and when it comes
about that ' my ' experience changes, ' my ' reality must
change accordingly.

Thus full justice is done also to the ' subjective ' factor,
and both are harmoniously combined in the Humanist
theory. If, nevertheless, it may seem that the balance
finally inclines somewhat to the ' subjective ' side, because,
after all, it is still held to be possible that every individual
soul may some day ' awake ' to find the reality of its
world with all its works abolished for it overnight, the
fault lies, not in our theory, but in the actual facts. For,
as we saw at the end of § 14, the real world is not yet
coextensive with the totality of existence, with the
whole of the selfs experience. It is a selection, the
arbitrariness and inadequacy of which engender doubts
which mere ' faith ' cannot fully cure. But these doubts
would vanish with an alteration in the character of
our experience. As the ' reality ' we ' recognized ' became
more harmonious and more adequately assimilative of

XX DREAMS AND IDEALISM 485

our whole experience, we should trust it more. And,
even as it is, we can draw a certain comfort from these
doubts. So long as ' the real world,' for so many and so
often, is so like a hideous nightmare, it is consoling to
think that it can wholly be transfigured, that it can
wholly be escaped from. And so, though as pragmatists
we must insist that it is our primary duty to alter and
improve our present world, and to remake it into greater
conformity with our ideals, we cannot humanly blame
those who have at all times sighed religiously for
' heavens,' in which all wrongs should be righted and all
evils overcome. We should teach them merely that the
celestial and the earthly aspirations are not incompatible,
that the kingdom of heaven does not come by observa-
tion, that to remake earth is to build up heaven, that
there is continuity enough in the world to warrant the
belief that the same forces and efforts are needed and
operative and efficacious in both spheres, and that what-
ever is to be perfected in heaven must have been begun
on earth.

But at this point apprehension may be felt by some
lest this series of realities embracing and annulling dreams
should be infinite, so that nothing we could ever experience
could ever be real enough to be final and to assure us that
it could never turn out to have been a dream. This fear,
however, would rest upon a misconception. Our pro-
cedure has throughout assumed that the reality of every
experience is accepted until grounds for doubting it
arise. This, indeed, is why ' dreams ' at first deceive
us. The grounds for doubt, moreover, we have seen,
are in the last resort intrinsic ; they consist either in
some breach with the continuity of the rest of ex-
perience, or in some disharmony which shocks us
into a denial of its ultimate reality. Perhaps, indeed,
the first case is really resolvable into the second ; for a
breach of continuity as such involves an unpleasant jar.
And if our experience were always wholly pleasant, and
its smooth flow never jarred with our ideals, should we
not pay scant heed to any incoherencies it might involve ?

486 STUDIES IN HUMANISM xx

If life were one great glorious pageant, should we dream
of questioning its incidents ? Should we not accept them
all in the spirit of little children watching the gorgeous
transformation of a pantomime ? Perhaps such a child-
like attitude is feasible in heaven, but on earth it is out
of place. For we as yet experience discordant planes of
reality, and so can and must conceive ideals of a more
harmonious universe. We can and must doubt, too,
the ultimateness of our present order : but we could not
and should not doubt the absolute reality of an experi-
ence which had become intellectually transparent and
emotionally harmonious. For then we should not need
to postulate anything beyond our experience to account
for it. Our immediate experience would cease to hint
that it was the symbol of an unmanifest reality.

Is such a situation better described in terms of Idealism
or of Realism ? Assuredly it can be described in either
way. For in such an experience everything would be
absolutely real ; and yet ' I ' should disown no part of it.
It is, therefore, merely a verbal question whether ' heaven '
is better defined idealistically as a condition in which
whatever is desired is realized, or realistically as one in
which whatever is real is approved of. But why not
simoly say that Humanism is alike the true Idealism and
the true Realism, and has conceived the true Ideal, in
which experience has become divine without ceasing to
be human, because it has wholly harmonized itself, and
achieved a perfect and eternal union with a perfected
Reality ?

INDEX

Absolute, the, 224-sj passim, xii,
14, 27, 116, 131, 134, 137, 139,
159, 166 «., 191, 217, 239, 288,

• 292, 294, 295, 394, 418 ; its disso-
ciation, 267, 271, 273 ; as mad,
273, 472; as not='God, ' 286-8,
364 ; as a postulate, 252-7 ; as re-
lated to experience, 464-7 ; as a
solipsist, 257, 261-5, 472 ; as un-
conscious, 265, 436

Absolute Mind, 10, 233, 289, 467

Absolutism, xiii, 119, 121-2, 137, 181,
203, 229, 255, 439 ; and Dissocia-
tion of Personality, 266-jj ; and
Religion, 2j4-gj ; its end in
scepticism, xvi, 285 ; its incom-
patibility with Humanism, 238 ; its
realistic trend, 454-9

Abstraction, of Logic, 87, 103 ; of the
universal, 173-5, from human think-
ing, 422-4

Action, answers questions ; 91, involves
selection, 233 ; makes common
world 318 ; its primacy, 408, 447 ;
tests truth, 440

Activity, 130, 131, 230, 232, 357,
468

Agency, 230, 392

Alternatives, implied in selection, 125 ;
in Humanism, 392-417

Anaxagoras, 35, 54

Anaximander , 29

Appearance, 220, 225, 227, 233, 239-
240, 247, 249-50, 254, 273, 288-9,
456, 467

Application, a test of truth, 8, 9, 40,
82, III, 146, 149, 296

A priori, in relation to experience,
245-6 ; to mathematics ; 55, to
postulates, 197, 236-7 ; to truth,
42, 251-S, 432-3

Apriorism, 42, 237

Aristophanes, 32 «. , 40

Aristotelian Society, 71 n.

Aristotle, 9, 23, 29, 32, 35, 41, 42,

43, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 60, 62, 63,

127, 152, 186, 396 n., 400
Arithmetic, 9, 55, 94, 236 n. , 402
Attention, selective, 231-5, 467
Axioms, XV, 121, 236-7, 241-5, 356,

467
Axioms as Postulates, ix, xi, 16, 198,

428, 468, 473

Bacon, 301 ?i.

Bain, A., 133

Balfour, A. /., 386

' Beauchamp,' Miss, 269, 270, 272

Becoming, of Ideas, 66

Belief, 353, 363

Bergson, H., xiv

Berkeley, xvii, 228 «., 231-2, 463, 466

Bosanquet, B., 71 n., 77 n., 81, 90, lOO,
103, 105, 284

Bradley, F. H. , xv, xvii, 4 «. , 59 «. , 76,
85, 96, 97, 99, 100, 114-140/awm,
146, 147 71., 178, 220 «., 225 n., 231,
237, 239 ». , 241, 260, 261-2, 267,
273, 275, 276, 283, 284, 286, 287,
289, 290, 424

Buridan, 339

Bussell, F. I'F,, 136, 139

Caird, £. , 35

Case, T., 73

Causation, 236 n., 242, 361, 467

Certainty, 83-4

Chance, 245, 318, 396, 418-9

Change, 39, 220 ; as illusion, 225,
255- 450 ; as real, 227, 322, 411,
419, 450

Choice, 127, 129, 219, 292-4, 358, 392,
394'5. 400-3, 406, 415, 427

Colour-blindness, 316-7

Common World, the, 4^., no, 182,
311, 315-20, 442, 466-7, 469

Concept, function of, 356 ; immutable,
64-5 ; instrumental, 56, 64 ; Plato's
theory of, 25, 50/. See also ' Uni-
versal '

487

488

STUDIES IN HUMANISM

Consistency, as criterion of truth, 65,

IOC, III, 150, 243
Contingency, 255, 403, 406, 407, 418,

422. See also ' Chance '
Contradiction, law of, 146, 150 ; no

criterion, 239-41 ; of the senses, 39,

no, 220, 309-10 ; of insufficient

concepts, 65, 239
Cowell, P. H., 416
Creation, 196, 261, 271, 434-5, 446,

447

Criterion, as consistency, 65, 149-50 ;
as control, 222 ; as non-contradic-
tion, 239-41

Curie, P., 89, 386

Darwin, 279, 385

Darwinism, 29

Definition, 1-2

Dehumanizing, xvii, 64, 69, 106, 172,

422, 425
Depersonalizing, 98, 100 «., 106, 112,

171. 353. 361
Derealizing, xvii, 425
Descartes, 395
Desire, in relation to truth, 91-3, 339-

340 ; to postulates, 256, 337-41 ; to

reality, 338-40, 425
Determinism, 125, 248, 284, 292,

3gi-420
Dewey, J., x, xiii, 96, 121, 122, 199,

361, 363. 369. 454. 458

Dialectic, 46, 172, 172-4, 279,280,422-4

Dialectical, spirit, 39, 211, 220 ; dia-
logues, 45, 47

Dickinson, G. L., 383 «.

Dre; ms, 202, 261, 316, 317, 319, 325,
382-3, 47S-SJ

Dualism, of fact vs. truth and value,
121 ; of Plato, 57, 61-2

Education, 23-5

Eleaticism, 48, 51, 53, 226, 288, 420

Emotion, 82, 99, 162, 354

Empiricism, 224-^j, 259, 277

Error, problem of, 3, 78, 105-6,

147 n., 170, 178, 180, 183; as

failure, 11 1-2 ; as psychological, 94 ;

as related to knowledge, 7, 123,

149 ; to truth-making, 65, 205, 212;

as valuation, 38
Ethics, postulate freedom, 399-401
Eucken, R., xv
Evaluation, of claims to truth, 4, 76,

157 n. ; of meanings, 86
Evil, 82, 188, 227, 247, 253, 256-7,

287-9, 331. 436
Evolutionism, 224-7, 278, 448
Experience, direct, 222 ; immediate,

392 ; religious, 363 ; relation to

experiment, 191 ; to reality, 202,
463-S. 469-70, 473-4. 482-6 ; to
understanding, 247 ; to solipsism,
259-60 ; fear of, 255

Experiment, 191, 193, 364

External world, 13, 202-3, 234, 362,
459, 471. 474

Fact, as accepted, 120, 185, 186, 198,
200, 354, 426, 428 ; as independent,

124, 181, 425 ; initial, 428-31,
434-7 ; objective, 189, 190 ; plastic,

125, 371, 445-6 ; primary, 186 ; and
truth, 121, 123-4, 370-2, 431 ; as
unpleasant, 93, 189-90 ; unreal, 188.
See also ' Reality '

Faith, 276, 290, 301, 389 ; relation
to reason and religion, j^g-d^

False, as valuation, 6, 143-4, 151,
154-5, 192-3, 212

Fatalism, 393

Feeling, 128-9, 246

Fichte, 422 n.

Fictions, 154 «., 193-4, 371

Fiske, /. , 29

Flournoy, T., 479

Flux, 40, 48, 51-3, 233, 255

Formal Logic, ix, notes, 12, 85, 96, 118,
143, 150, 174, 242, 447, 468

God, ambiguousness of, 134, 285, 364;
definition of, 136, 285 ; infinity of,
138 ; omnipotence of, 137, 287-8,
329, 418 ; proofs of, 305, 327, 335,
336-41, 344, 362 ; as creator, 435-6,
447 ; as postulate, 362 ; source of
values, 219, 244-5 i relation to the all,
26, 276, 285, 328-34, 364, 369, 436

Gomperz, T., 28-33, 35 •"•. 46. 47

Good, and bad, 6, 37, 152, 154; defined,
152 ; kinds of, 191 ; and true, 6,
152, 154, 310 ; Idea of, 54-5, 459 ;
The, 153, and the One, 55

Goodhart, Dr., 460, 471

Goodness, moral, 153, 246 ; of gods,
331-2

Gorgias, 86

Greek, philosophy, 23 / , 43, 368 ;
science, 25

Green, T. H. , 278, 279, 282, 284 n. , 286

Groie, 31

Habit, and freedom, 400-3, 409 ; plas-
ticity of, 409-10, 417, 448

Haeckel, 279

' Hanna,' Rev. Mr., 460, 470

Hartmann, E. von, 265, 436

Hegel, xvii, 172-3, 278, 280, 414,
422, 425

Heine, xii

INDEX

489

Heraclitus, 39, 51, 319

Herodotus, 313

Hoff-ding, H., xv

Hoernle, H. F. A., 71 «., 77, 115, 147,
174 n., 392 n.

Horn, F., 47

Humanism, definition, 5 n., 10-16 ; a
method, 16, 19 ; of Protagoras, 34,
68, 113 ; relation to Absolutism,
238 ; to faith, 365 ; to freedom,
391-2, 408 ; to idealism, 453, 457,
463, 486 ; to metaphysics, i6, 19,
226, 229, 443, 451 ; to psychology,
72, 354 ; to realism, 453, 457, 459-
462, 486 ; to religion, 135-6, 351,
368 ; to scepticism, 69 ; to sub-
jectivism, 69, 457, 463 ; to truth, 121

Humanis7n, ix, xi, xiii, 129, 132 ; and
notes, 16, 70, 120, 128, 178, 187,
190, 241, 242, 246, 275, 317, 353,
416, 422, 431, 436, 437, 448, 466,
475, 481

Hume, 2.2.1, 230-1

Huxley, T. H., 279

Idea, communion of, 48, 54 ; de-
pendent on experience, 252, 420 ;
as psychical fact, 77 ; of Good, 54-5,

459

Ideal, its formation, 4, 163-6, 223 ;
reality, 199 ; relation to application,
40, 164 ; to idealism, 453 ; to man,
xvii, 70, 107-9, 123, 164-6, 187,
213, 222; to truth, 166/., 180-1

Ideal Theory, of Plato, 43/., 109-10,
322, 457-9

Idealism, 4^j-S6 ; ambiguity of, 228 n. ,
453 ; difficulty of, 48 ; relation to
solipsism, 258-65. See also ' Ab-
solutism,' ' Personal Idealism,' and
' Subjectivism '

Identity, 85, 237, 319

Imagery, 94

Immortality, proof of, 386-7 ; and
Platonism, 57

Independence, of dream-worlds, 473,
475-6 ; of external world, 13, 202
474 ; of ideals, 165 , of Logic, 95,
97-9, 103-S ; of Plato's Ideas,
57-8, 60, 175 ; of reality, 65, 122,
177, 180/, 321, 430, 439, 455,
474 ; of theory, 126-8, 131 ; of
thought, 96 ; of truth, 65, 69, 157 «.,
177, 182

Indetermination, 248, 3^2-420, 427,
448

Indetermiuism, jgz-^zo

Infinite, 295, 314, 449

Intellect, its games, 7, 154 : its satis-
faction, 115, 246; pure, 7, 128

Intellectualism, ix, xvii, 4 ji., 5, 10, 98,
99, 126, 128, 129, 131, 160, 180, 228-
229, 237, 244, 246, 264, 396 n., 441,
444, 458-9 ; its psychology, 14 ; re-
lation to experience, 13, 191-2 ; to
Plato, 25, 145 ; to scepticism, xvi,
69, 96, III, 177. See also ' R2lX\ovi'
alism ' and ' Sensationalism '

Interest, logical and psychological, 8i ;
relation to purpose, 82 ; to reality,
199-200, 221, 438 ; to science, 98,
235 ; to truth, 5, 188, 191

Irrelevance, 79, 85, 98, 103, 112, 121,
158. 363

James, W., x, xiii, 5 n., 119, 131, 135,
136, 231 n., 299, 352, 373, 375,
378 «., 391 «., 393, 406, 420, 445,
461, 479

'Jericho,' xvi, 119, 134, 138, 139,
170 n., 225

Jerusalem, VV. , xv

Joachim, H. H. , i6j-j8 passim, 3 «. ,
I4«., 103, 105-9, 122, 147, 283, 284

Joseph, H. W. B., 122

Jowett, B., 145 71., 278

Judgment, 89-90, 96, no, in n.,
185, 191-3, 356

Kaftt, 126, 127, 178, 220, 230, 237,

278, 280, 467, 468
Knowing, makes real differences, 438-44
Knox, H. v., X, xiii, xviii, 96, 150,

220 «., 239 n., 282 n.

Language, pragmatic, 7 n.

Law, application of, 8, 173-4 ; jcon-
stancy of, 416-7 ; and miracle, 293,
413; as habit, 320, 409-10, 447;
as mechanical, 414 ; as postulate,
396, 398 ; as rule, 409

Leibriiz, 219, 288

Liberum Veto, 297

Lie, 94-5, 154 n., 323, 340

Logic, definition of, 78, 100 ; formal,
3, 79, 96, 142-3, 148-9 ; Humanist,
82 ; normative, 99-101, 159 ; prag-
matic, n6, 143 ; traditional, 4, 142 ;
of sophists, 32 ; relation to actual
knowing, 74 ; to Psychology, yi-
II J, 162 n., 366, 436

Logical connexion, also psychological,
16, 76, 80, 95, 436

Lotze, 435

Lytton, Lord, 480

Mach, E. , XV, 7

Mackenzie, J. S., 59 n. , 283, 284-5
McTaggart, J. M. E., 276 n., 284,
287, 350, 422

490

STUDIES IN HUMANISM

Mainldnder, 272

Man the Measure, xvii, 13, 33-9. 210,
298, 307-11. 315. 320

Manse I, 280

Materialism, 11, 267, 283, 378

Mathematics, 55, 84, 222, 353

Matter, 377, 415, 434, 443, 449, 468

Meaning, 83, 86-8g ; and ambiguity,
87 ; and application, 9, 149, 171,
243 ; and context, 86, 95, 102,
149; and fact, 77 «. , 86, 95; and
purpose, 9, 82, 112, 149, 171, 371

Mechanism, 367, 414

Melissus, 314

Mellone, S. H., 16-7 n.

Metaphysics, xvi, i, 11, i6-2i, 201,
277, 426, 437-8, 462 ; aids to faith,
278 ; depend on personality, 18 ;
not coercive, 17, 359 ; Plato's, 58/! ;
relation to ethics, 273 ; to evolution,
225-8, 411 ; to freedom, 398, 405,
408, 417-20 ; to Humanism and
Pragmatism, 16, 20, 244, 428-9,
434-5, 451 ; to practice, 246 ; to
higher realities, 222 ; to scepticism,
74, 100, 108, 116-7

Mill, J. S., 100 n., 115, 236 n., 278,
279

Miracle, 293, 396, 413

Monism, 159, 219, 267, 450. See also
' Absolutism '

Moore, A. IV. , 178

Moore, G. E., 177, 228, 458

Muirhead, J. H., 418

Murray, D. L. , x

Myers, F. W. H., $7^-88 passitn

Myths, of Plato, 41-2 ; of religions,
305. 336, 342-8

Naturalism, 10, 158-9, 230, 284

Natural Selection, 38

Necessity, 83

Newman, J. H. , 136, 352

Newton, 441

Not-being, 56, no

Novelty, 244-5, 294. 333-4- 385

One, the, 314-6, 320, 328-34, 369 ;
and the Many, 271-2, 315, 328-9,
450 ; as Absolute, 61 ; as the Good,
55 ; as the Idea, 52-3

Ontological proof, 228, 241, 251-2

Origin and history, 244-5, 396 n.

Ostwald, IV., XV

Panpsychism, 443
Pantheism, 26-7, 364
Papini, G. , xv
Parmenides, 61, 312, 313, 322

' Parmenides ' of Plato, 45-7, 49, 59,
60, 62, 67

Participation difficulty in Plato, 45,
54-5, 59, 169

Particularity unknowable, 56

Pascal, 352

Pattison, M. , 278

Peirce, C. S., xiii, 5, 161 n.

Perception, 177, 311, 316-20

Personal Idealism, 4 11. , 16, 228 n. , 463

Personal Idealism, 129, and notes 16,
83, 85, 118, 120, 198, 353, 436, 468

Personality, its dissociation, 266-73 ;
implied in science, 98 ; its riature,
129, 381-2 ; not to be abstracted
from, 95, 353-4, 424, 463 ; relation
to meaning, 86, 88

Pessimism, 189, 257, 272

Philosophy, difficulty of, 139-40, 308 ;
failure of, 137-8, 359

Plato, xvi, xvii, 6, 25, 30, 32-70,
109-10, 113, 123, 127, 132, 145,
162 n., 169, 177, 228 «., 229,
283, 286, 298-300, 306-11, 322,
434. 441. 456. 457. 458, 461

Plato's Chasm, 27, 57-9, 62, 69, 109,
175-6, 289, 455, 458

Pluralism, 97, 127, 138, 219, 224, 267,
271, 273, 459

Plutarch, 30

Podmore, F., 373, 380, 384

Poincar^, H., xv, 205, 319 n.

Postulates, 121, 197-8, 234, 241-5, 353,
356-62, 471 ; of the Absolute, 252-4 ;
of determinism, 394-9, 405-7 ; of
freedom, 399-401; of Logic, 116-8,
236-7 ; methodological, 397-8, 405-
407, 417, 449 ; of rationality, 194,
292

Postulation, 91, 93, 280, 394

Practice, ambiguity of, 131 ; definition
of, 129-30 ; relation to theory, 126-8,
246

Pragmatic Method, xiv, xvi, 367, 428-9,
433, 436-8

Pragmatic Reality, 190, 433, 475

Pragmatic Test, 93, 158, 186, 193,
358-9, 366, 469

Pragmatic Value, of religion, 359,
368 ; of science, 359

Pragmaticism, 5 n.

Pragmatism, 154-5, 198, 246, 418,
441 ; definition of, 3-12 ; as method,
16, 20«. , 186, 429-30; relation to
F. H. Bradley, 11.0,71., 116, 133; to
Humanism, 15-6, 245, 437 ; to
Kant, 127 ; to metaphysics, 16, 19,
224-s, 428-9, 434

Predication, experimental, 192 ; a
puzzle, 73

INDEX

491

Prince, Dr. Morton, 269, 272, 3S2

Proof, 386-7

Protagoras, xvii, 4«., 15, 25, 31 «. ,
33-8, 69, 113, 132, 145-6, 2()8-j48,
457

Psychical Research, 370-90

Psychologism, xv, 72, 95

Psychology, definition of, 75 ; abnormal,
268, 387 ; relation to evidence, 363 ;
to Humanism, 354 ; to idealism,
268 ; to Logic, ji-iij, 275, 291/;,
365 ; to purpose, 12 ; to religion,
337-41, 363, 367-8 ; to subjectivity,
468-9

Pure Thought, 14, 96-7, 143, 354

Purpose, and Absolutism, 10, 230-5,
248 ; and interest, 82 ; and reality,
412 ; and science, 152 ; definition
of, 133; ultimate, 55, 156, 158

Purposiveness of mental life, 10, 82,
99, 128, 191, 235, 247, 354

Questions, 90-1

Rashdall, H., 71 n., jj, 136, 137

Rationalism, 350, 352, 425 ; fears
experience, 255 ; not rational, xvi,
252, 355. See also Intellectualism

Realism, 13, 122, 181, 201, 228 n.,
258, 425, 439, 453-62, 464-6, 470,
473-4. 476, 481-3. 486

Reality, absolute, 214-22J, 321, 486 ;
dynamic, 215 ; higher, 222, 431-2,
47S-7' 480; incomplete, 411, 419,
427, 448-51 ; independent, 321, 430,
439. 461-2, 465, 470, 473, 481 ;
initial, 432-3 ; plastic, 427, 433, 444-
446 ; primary, 187, 202, 220-2, 233,
460, 470, 474 ; real, 221-2, 438-9,
474-5, 484 ; rigid, 419, 427, 433 ;
static, 225, 427 ; ultimate, 250, 436,
485 ; its antedating, 339, 430 ; its de-
grees, 249-50; its discovery, 429-431,
439-40 ; its ' making ' 422-4^1, 120,
198-203, 318, 320-2, 340/ , 462, 467 ;
relation to dreams, 202, 473, 477,
479-81 ; toexperience, 469-70,482-4 ;
to interest, 199, 438 ; to predication,
193-8 ; to truth, 185, 198-9, 422-5 ;
as claim, 252, 430 ; as value, 473,
480; as a whole, 248, 251

Reason, its relation to Faith and
Religion, J4g-6g ; its function,
355-6. 409, 410 ; pure, xii, 65, 67,
255, 281-2

Relevance, 67, 87, 102, 112, 151-2,
155-6. 159. 164, 363

Religion, its relation to Absolutism,
^74'97> 345 ; 'o Faith and Reason,
j4g-6g\ its definition, 135-7

Revelation, 344-5, 389

Riddles of the Sphinx, notes, 16, 203,

275, 402, 436, 476
Risk, 79, 85, 102, 161, 193, 215, 255,

295, 296, 358, 361, 418
Ritschl, 136, 352
Royce, J., 120 w. , 139, 230 n.
Russell, B. A. VV., 177, 458

St. Paul, 36

Santayana, G., xiv, 429 n.

Satisfaction, of intellect, 115, 246; of

truth, 82 ; of ultimate reality, 436
Scepticism, about Logic, 73-4 ; relation

to intellectualism, xvi, 69, 96, 100,

114 «. , 116, 118, 178, 206, 210, 237;

to Protagoreanism, 38, 68, 113, 298,

456 ; to subjectivism, 69
Schopenhauer, xv
Schultz, /. , XV
Science, and Aristophanes, 32 w. ; and

' contradictions,' 39 ; and faith, 301,

361, 366 ; and freedom, 397-9 ; and

man, 98, 171, 412 ; and pantheism,

27 ; and postulates, 236 ; and

Protagoras, 34-5 ; and purpose,

152 ; and theology, 26-8, 277-82,

364 ; and time, 73 ; as system,

150-2 ; its aim, 235 n.
Selection, 10, 38, 125, 132, 187, 190-1,

202, 231-5, 354, 360, 371, 382, 392,

429, 438, 450 ,460, 484
Self-determination, 393-4
Sensationalism, 177, 228, 277, 299,

309-10
Sense-perception, becomes objective, 38
Sensible, its Becoming, 66 ; relation to

Idea, 56, 59
Shakespeare, 478

Sidgwick, Alfred, x, xiii, 8, 9, 149
Sidgwick, Heniy, 397
Sidis, B., 460, 471
Society for Psychical Research, 372-90,

478
Socrates, 32, 35, 37, 43, 52, 220,

298-9, 304, 307, 311
Solipsism, 69, 234, 257 n., 2^8-26^,

463-4, 46g-7S
' Somehow,' as the ultima ratio, 58, 61,

168, 250, 255, 276, 297
' Sophist ' of Plato, 46 n., 67, 286
Sophists, 30-3, 299
Spencer, H., 137, 225-6, 279
Spinoza, 159

Stewart, J. A., 68 n., 284 n.
Stout, G. P., 170, 226, 231
Sturt, H. C, xiii, 97, 118, 129, 131,

282
Subjectivism, 457, 463-4 ; and Prota-

492

STUDIES IN HUMANISM

goras, 38, 68, 69, 456 ; and
scepticism, 69, 456
Subliminal Self, 375-9

Taylor, A. E., 224-51 passim, 122,
139, 146, 157, 162 n., 284

Teichmiiller, 57

Teleology, 12, 230-5 ; and Idea of
Good, 55

Telepathy, 380, 384

Thales, 339

' Theaetetus, ' of Plato, xvi, 35, 37, 38,
48 w., 109-10, 123, 132, 145, 299,
308

Theology, 26, 135, 178, 196, 278-81,
283, 285, 288, 349, 351-2, 368 ; of
Protagoras, 298, 300, 341-6

Theory vs. practice, 126-8

Thoughts, are acts, 130

Time, and Christianity, 280 ; and
eternity, 422 ; and science, 73

Transcendence, illusory, 183, 461 ; of
Ideas, 57; of knowing, 122, 178, 455

Transmission theory of soul, 378, 386

Truth, absolute, 48, 67-8, 122, 181,
195, 204-214, 263 ; abstract, 8, 193 ;
dehumanized, xvi, 64-5 ; disagree-
able, 93 ; efficacious, 118, 195 ;
eternal, 174, 205 ; ideal, non-human,
60, 67, 106-9, 170, 207-9 1 inde-
pendent, 64, 157 n., 182 ; methodo-
logical, 194 ; objective, 34, 38, 70,
92, 152, 182 ; potential, 8 ; its
ambiguity, 141-162, 241 ; its ante-
dating, 157 «. , 195, 430; its de-
personalizing, xvi, 112, 171, 353 ;
its etherealizing, 11 1-2 ; its ' making '
4, 120, 124, 142, 151, 161, i'jg-203,
312, 422, 425-6, 431, 438, 462 ; its
progressiveness, 65, 157 «., 194-5,
211-3 ; its variety, 360; as claim,
3, 8, 66, 76, "JT, 78, 94, III, 144-
162, 183, 186, 193, 206, 299-300,
367, 389, 425, 432 ; as consistency,
100, 107, 241 ; as correspondence
with reality, xiii, xvii, 116-8, 122-4,
177, 181, 241, 425, 426, 455 ; as
dependent, 182-3, 195-6, 206 ; as

system, 123, 169/, 195; as valua-
tion, 38, 76, 130, 143/, 196, 211,
299, 310 ; in relation to consequences,
5, 91, III, 154-5. 185, 186, 193,
357 ; to context, 8 ; to desire, 91-3,
338-41, 374; to discovery, 157 n.,
194-6, 429 ; to fact, 121-5, 180,
185, 370-2 ; to interest, 5 ; 154 ;
to man, 5, 143, 263, 426 ; to mean-
ing, xi, 142 ; to pui-pose, 10, 112,
152-4, 156, 193, 194 ; to reality,
185, 199, 422-5 ; to satisfaction,
83 ; to success, 118, 193, 362

Universals, Aristotle's, 63, 175 ; as
applicable, 113 ; as concrete, 172-6 ;
and particulars, 113, 173-4

Universe, alternatives, 219 ; as fated,
418; idea of, 295, 333 ; asmonistic,
218 ; as plastic, 448 ; as satisfied,
223 ; as system, 247-8 ; its unity,
127, 136, 290, 292-s, 332-4

Universities, 15, 277

Usefulness, and truth, 8, 161, 185,
243. 313-S. 323 ; and good, 191

' Useless ' knowledge, 24, 242

Validity, and claim, 144-60, 247 ; and

origin, 242-5 ; of postulates, 357 ;

objective, 90
Values, distinguished by Protagoras,

35, 299-300, 309-11 ; dependent on

use, 244 ; as psychical facts, 174 ;

logical, 7, 158 ; vital, 76, 358 ;

subject to logic, 78 ; to psychology,

76
Verification, essential to truth, 7-8,

193, 197, 246, 253, 357-8, 362,

365-6, 389-90, 432
Voluntarism, 11, 92, 128, 130, 142, 143

Ward, J., 230 n.
Wells, H. G., 293

Will, 99, 128, 132-3, 357 ; to believe,
136. 350, 353. 358

Zeller, E., 44
Zeno, 27, 420

THE END

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh.

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